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En-dash usage

Thread retitled from "Continued forumshopping about en-dash usage".
 – Pointer to a relevant discussion elsewhere.

At Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Airports#New RfC, someone's launched another "hyphens vs. en dashes" RfC with regard to airports, after one RfC and various requested moves have already declined to override MoS on this. Someone seems not to have noticed WP:LOCALCONSENSUS and WP:OWN. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 02:34, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

I would suggest that hyphens seem to be correct for airports. I can not find anyone using en dashes. In our list of US airports all use hyphens except for Rock Springs – Sweetwater County Airport, for which the actual name is "Rock Springs Sweetwater County Airport". There are 53 U.S. hyphenated airport names. Some use en dashes, some hyphens. Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania uses a hyphen, correctly I would say. Am I missing something? Apteva (talk) 04:32, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
Or are hyphens always correct for airports and Wilkes-Barre because of this advice: "Wrong: Franco–British rivalry; "Franco" is a combining form, not independent; use a hyphen: Franco-British rivalry"? Apteva (talk) 04:39, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
The following nine U.S. airport article names use en dash:
Some of the hyphens in the airport list are for old or alternate names. The remaining 28 U.S airports use hyphen. Apteva (talk) 07:00, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
I do not express currently any reasoning about airport names in general, but the comparison of "Wilkes-Barre" to "Franco-British" is completely wrong because of John Wilkes and Isaac Barré. Also, Apteva's use of space-stroke-space instead of an en dash directly in this posting (which is exactly about the hyphen–dash rivalry) looks as a provoking illiteracy, which does not contribute to establishing of the consensus. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 11:02, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
The link from "stroke" takes me to an article on hyphen-minus, yet a fifth type of dash type character. I am not aware of any airport name using a hyphen-dash (-), and I used the exact punctuation used in our article names in the list above. Some use an en dash, some a space en dash space, and all are in the list above, although now MSP also uses endash. Other than that I am not aware of using "stroke" "in this posting". Apteva (talk) 04:01, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
The hyphen-minus is a type of dash, really? Not more than polyvinyl chloride is a sort of wood, or laminate is something of parquetry. You think of a substitute as a variety – it's not correct. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 19:40, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
Actually I was not able to reproduce the hyphen-minus, but by "dash type" I meant "hyphen or longer horizontal line used for punctuation". I thought that should have been clear from the context. So I was saying "flooring" not "wood". At least when I cut and pasted the hyphen-minus into my word processor, it came out as a hyphen. Our article on dashes points out there are more than two types of dashes using dash in the sense of "not a hyphen or minus sign but a horizontal line used for punctuation", and this guideline says that WP uses two of them. Apteva (talk) 21:11, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
I understand you when you say "dash type character" to mean what is often called "horizontal line" on this page. But neither the dash article nor the MOS: uses the unmodified word "dash" to include hyphens and minus signs. I know semantic distinctions can be arbitrary, but you will definitely confuse us if you call hyphens and minus signs "dashes". Art LaPella (talk) 00:43, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
Not a problem. Sometimes posts are very confusing, and sometimes they can be deciphered. Sometimes they remain forever a complete enigma (and yet are clearly not vandalism). Apteva (talk) 01:49, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
Apteva, I don't doubt that you have good intentions; but your zeal in many forums at the same time and on a couple of style issues is getting disruptive. Please don't edit this MOS page to further your present push. I have just reverted that, and I invite others to monitor things also. This page is to serve the needs of editors maintaining 4,000,000 articles. Its provisions have generally been weighed very carefully, by editors with linguistic knowledge and a great deal of style experience.
If you have questions about hyphens and dashes – and certainly about proper nouns and proper names, on which I see you have picked up some strange folk ideas – feel free to drop in at my talkpage and we can talk it over.
☺
NoeticaTea? 11:36, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
Isn't the relevant section this bit, at MOS:ENDASH?: "By default, follow the dominant convention that a hyphen is used in compounded proper names of single entities, not an en dash. Guinea-Bissau; Bissau is the capital, and this distinguishes the country from neighboring Guinea. McGraw-Hill, a publishing house". That seems to me to suggest we should follow the use of a hyphen where that's the official, formal name, maybe even in every case. The airport is a single entity, even if the bits that gave it the name aren't. Also, a quick scan suggests that several of the pages above that are using the endash now were moved from the hyphenated version at the end of last year, so it seems that was the stable principle in practice as well until a while ago. N-HH talk/edits 11:49, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
ps: and, as ever, this merely reinforces my view that we could save ourselves all a lot of trouble by doing what most online and many print publishers do and forgetting about the specialist use of, and distinction between, hyphens and endashes. But that's another story, and I know its use makes many people strangely happy. N-HH talk/edits 11:49, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
No, N-HH. Airports are not typical entities of that sort. The default is here overruled; and indeed practice "out there" is variable even for the same airport name. Unlike "Guinea-Bissau", say. Airport names are usually functional artificial constructions with semantic weight, more like definite descriptions than fully autonomous proper names. Contrast "McGraw-Hill", which is in a way fossilised. No one thinks of "McGraw" and "Hill" as meaningfully linked in that name. Not any more.
Your view about saving a lot of trouble by obliterating the best-practice distinction that MOS preserves is well and truly noted. Thank you for not going on about it! The community spoke on these issues last year, loud and clear. There was strong endorsement of the distinctions MOS makes, which are far from unusual or freakish. They contribute to a high-quality encyclopedia, with enhanced readability. But I don't want to go on about it!
NoeticaTea? 12:47, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
Well I can only counter that it seems to me at least that they very much are entities of exactly that sort, and that no clear justification has been offered for any decision to simply "overrule" that default. I don't quite get the idea that an airport name derived from a combination of the names of two people or after the two places it serves is any less a "fully autonomous proper name" - whatever that might mean exactly, especially the first half - than the name of a publishing house originally founded by two different people. And at what point might "fossilisation" occur? Some airport names are very old. Some even have their names specifically referred to, in multiple sources such as this syndicated AP report - even if, I know, those sources are not academic guides to grammar and punctuation - as being "hyphenated". N-HH talk/edits 14:31, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
The hyphenation in that article will not be based on the "correct" name, but since it is an AP story, it will be based on the AP house style. Neotarf (talk) 15:04, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
I'm not talking about the hyphenation itself or AP style, I'm talking about their use of the actual word hyphenation to describe the name. Something which is very common in other sources and reports too, including when quoting those involved in determining the name change. N-HH talk/edits 15:09, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
I also noticed this, and I made a list of sources explicitly saying that these names are hyphenated. And I can't find any source saying that they are dashed.... This is exactly what you would expect to find if airport names were hyphenated proper names. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:25, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
I assume the response to that is, or would be, two-fold though: first, that it's merely loose language from people who are not punctuation experts, and secondly that even if it "is" a hyphen, our style-guide not only requires an endash but mandates us to force the change when rendering it here. Whether any or all of that has any real weight, I'm not sure .... N-HH talk/edits 16:33, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
The second argument would be quite misleading? Both WP:HYPHEN and WP:DASH happens to recommend a hyphen for proper names of single entities. We can all agree that an airport is a single entity. Maybe someone will want to argue that airports don't have proper names? --Enric Naval (talk) 14:44, 26 September 2012 (UTC)
They already have of course, not least previously in this very thread ... N-HH talk/edits 14:50, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Enric Naval:

  • I have answered your point about "sources explicitly saying that these names are hyphenated" at the RFC itself. As I write, you have not responded there. Why not? You are instead continuing to argue here as if I had not responded! That is unhelpful and uncooperative. If you would prefer that I ignore your points in future, just tell me, all right? ♫♪
  • The answer I gave at that RFC is one that N-HH predicts, above. My text at the RFC:

"That's all misleading, Enric. For example, people commonly use 'hyphenated' to mean 'with a hyphen or something that looks like one'. Most writers (and many editors ☺) are not style experts, and most are unaware that there are such things as en dashes. See my answer to you earlier, timestamped today at 23:33, (UTC)"

Answer there, please. It's an RFC affecting naming on Wikipedia, and needs to be taken seriously. It is not a political forum for diminishing the effectiveness of MOS.
  • You write: "Both WP:HYPHEN and WP:DASH [happen] to recommend a hyphen for proper names of single entities." That is inaccurate and misleading. Both those MOS guidelines are more nuanced. Read them again. In particular, note that the examples you appeal to are not of the form we are discussing here: "X~Y Z". They are of the simpler form "X~Y". There are several examples (like "the Roman–Syrian War") where the pattern relevant to these airport discussions is realised with an en dash.

N-HH:

  • Enric wrote: "Maybe someone will want to argue that airports don't have proper names?" You responded: "They already have of course, not least previously in this very thread." Really? Where? I had written:

"Airport names are usually functional artificial constructions with semantic weight, more like definite descriptions than fully autonomous proper names."

If your assertion referred to that statement, please amend and discuss what has been said rather than some distortion of it.
  • You earlier asked for clarification. That was healthier! Now let me explain. Many proper names are fully autonomous. Many are free of any descriptive meaning. Perhaps the names "Amanda", "Rhode Island", "New South Wales" are good examples. I think few people analyse "Amanda" as describing its bearer as lovable, as the etymological meaning would suggest. Nor "Rhode Island" as if it referred to some island, with modification by "Rhode". I can assure you that for typical Australian users of "New South Wales" that proper name does not call to mind "Wales", nor the quality of being either "south" or "new". These are fully autonomous proper names, freed of any original descriptive content. But not all proper names are like that. "Southern Ocean" remains descriptive for many users, though it functions as a proper name. Same for "Northern Territory" (in Australia), and "North Carolina". And so also for very many airport names. Whichever way you manage its punctuation, "St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport" is descriptive: it is an airport, and an international one. And it is semantically associated with the placenames that are its components. It is not a fully autonomous proper name. It has current descriptive meaning, and is not fossilised like "Rhode Island". If for that reason alone, the semantic distinctions marked by hyphen and en dash are preserved in many sources: in best-practice publishing. And that best practice is what MOS, supported by community affirmations that are endorsed by ArbCom, seeks to emulate.

NoeticaTea? 00:32, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

[The following is moved from above, where it interrupted my post. Don't do that!–NoeticaTea? 03:47, 27 September 2012 (UTC)]
  • Roman–Syrian War might not be the best example to use, as I can not confirm that using an en dash is supported by "common usage".[1] (an article that makes liberal use of en dash in other places, but not for Roman-Syrian War) Anything that has attained "proper name status" by definition has an established proper name. Anything that has not can clearly use any preferred style convention, such as using an en dash in certain situations and some other punctuation in other situations. Does the spelling of a proper name include the punctuation internal to itself? I say it does. While we tend to eschew stylistic spellings such as WAL★MART, we do include hyphens, spaces and /, but is there really any proper name that is constructed using an en dash? Apteva (talk) 02:39, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
On the contrary, it's a fine example. First note that most web sites default to hyphen wherever possible (as opposed to sentence-level punctuation, for which many of them reserve the en dash, spaced, like the one you have just linked). But Wikipedia prefers sources in print, from quality publishers. Next, so what if few sources use that styling for that war? Wikipedia has a consistent style for such cases, and it has wide community backing. This style is applicable to all articles with names like "X~Y War" on Wikipedia. Consider the infamous case of Mexican–American War. This source is inconsistent (compare p. 346 and the index entries with the main choice, which is en dash). This one has hyphen once, and just a space another time. This one has hyphen once, and en dash another time. This one and this one have en dash; and you can find very many that have hyphen. So what? No, the space, hyphen, or en dash is not a part of the name, or a feature of the name. It is applied to the name. Styling is applied, according to a manual of style. That's what you do with a manual of style, like MOS.
Not rocket science, in the end.
NoeticaTea? 04:17, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
I fail to understand why the article referenced deliberately used a hyphen for the war and deliberately used en dashes so many other places other than that they thought that was correct in each case. The MOS does not say to make up preferred spellings. It says use what is correct. I hasten to suggest that anyone named John Lennard-Jones would take severe offense to their name being spelled Lennard/Jones, Lennard Jones, or Lennard(endash)Jones. While an airport is not going to call up wikipedia foundation and complain, they certainly could "roll their eyes" at the use of en dash. It is very clear people can point to the current MOS and say that airport names should per WP:HYPHEN use a hyphen and that others can say that per WP:ENDASH an endash should be used. That is not the question. The question is which is correct? It is clear to me that we need to add an example of an airport, and that example needs to use a hyphen. And I can show you 170 out of 200 books checked that back up that suggestion, and only 6 out of those that use endash. The rule as I see it is very simple. "Hyphenation also occurs ... in proper names", to quote our very own WP:MOS. So, use an en dash if you make up a name with two places and use a hyphen if that name attains the status of being a proper name. As to Mexican American War, out of 100 books checked, only three use endash, and the rest either a hyphen or a space. I would count them if I was settling a discussion about the name of the article, but I would categorically say that in our great ENDASH zeal of 2011,[2] the article is now definitely incorrectly named (for anyone wondering, article names are not used when a diff is given - anything works just as well as the actual article name). Apteva (talk) 08:06, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
And the answer is Mexican-American War (36:2 is far enough). Apteva (talk) 08:13, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
Noetica, I replied here. You have dismissed all those sources, but you have presented absolutely no source that contradicts them. You have provided no style guide that says that airport names are not proper names or that they are dashed.
You claim that airport names are just descriptive names, but this is easily refuted by names like Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Ben Gurion International Airport, Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. Wiley Post–Will Rogers Memorial Airport, Petersburg James A. Johnson Airport, McClellan-Palomar Airport, Charles M. Schulz – Sonoma County Airport, Chicago O'Hare International Airport, Portsmouth International Airport at Pease, Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and many others in List of airports in the United States.
These are not random descriptive names that some wikipedia editor came up with. These are official names which are officially communicated to air transport authorities and then used to create the international airport codes and other codes. If the official name changes, the codes change. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:14, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
No no, Enric. That is all mixed up, like the reminder you have just issued about a question to me at the parallel forum where this is all under discussion. There I have responded to you: You asked no such question. Concentrate! You misunderstand me here too.
Editors, it is a shocking waste of our resources to conduct parallel discussions at two talkpages. Can Apteva and Enric decide where they would prefer to exhume all of this old wrangling, and confine it to one place?
And I have requested a speedy close to Apteva's new RM for Mexican–American War. Surely we can do without that Leviathan being revived!
NoeticaTea? 11:11, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
I replied here. I am hoping that you find style sources that support your particular interpretation of proper names and that you post them there. --Enric Naval (talk) 13:30, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
Still all mixed up, still not reading what was actually said, still reiterating points that were dispatched many times in 2011, still expecting answers but not providing them yourself, still replicating discussions at several forums. Stop it. NoeticaTea? 17:44, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Noetica, I understand the principle you enunciate: in proper names when the elements to be joined have significant independent semantic weight (as is the case if the combination is of two cities or nationalities, for example), then use en-dash; otherwise use hyphen. However, this is not easy to apply. Firstly, it's necessary to understand the origin of the name (e.g. "McClellan~Palomar Airport" could, for all I know as a non-American, be named after a person with the surname "McClellan-Palomar", in which case a hyphen should be used, or after two places, or two people, or one of each, in which cases an en-dash should be used). Secondly, it is a highly subjective issue as to when the independent semantic weight disappears. I hyphenate "McGraw-Hill" because I don't know of or remember publishers called "McGraw" and "Hill". But suppose Macmillan merged with OUP and called itself "Macmillan~OUP", then what should I do? To me, both names would have independent semantic weight, but others might not have this awareness, and when would it stop being significant? In summary, the principle doesn't seem suitable for a Manual of Style: it's not sufficiently clear and precise for most editors to use. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:01, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Fine, Peter. Thank you for reading with care – and for asking a reasonable question and making thoughtful points. In due course I would like to answer those. Meanwhile, see what I have posted at one of the discussions running parallel to this one (also at Talk:Mexican American War#Requested move, where I call for that RM to be closed):

"Good, Enric. You got it: I answered there [that is, here at WT:MOS]. However, your report of my answer is not accurate. Nor is your take on my view of the matter. Ask what you want there, and I will answer there. On this proviso: this unruly and unproductive RFC and the ill-advised new RM at Talk:Mexican–American War be wound up first. I have personally spent the equivalent of full-time weeks of work on these issues, most of it in 2011. I am prepared to do more; but not in several forums simultaneously just because someone thinks that is a good idea. I don't. Wikipedia identifies it as WP:FORUMSHOPPING, as SMcCandlish points out above."

That is my considered and necessary response to these issues being raised in an especially disruptive way, yet again. It is such disorder that led to the ArbCom intervention in 2011. Those who remember it will not want a repeat!
So: all in good time, right?
NoeticaTea? 22:13, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
It is not my impression that there is any disruption going on, other than a group of hyphen articles that were inappropriately, but with the best of intentions, moved to endashes, mostly in 2011. It is easy to fix - recognize that "Roman-Syrian War" and "Mexican-American War" are proper names and use hyphens, and adjust the MOS to show this. See below. But I also think there are way, way too many examples in the MOS. Apteva (talk) 01:49, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
"Proper names"? No they're not mere proper names. The definitions of proper nouns and proper names need to be carefully used, not bandied about. Tony (talk) 02:56, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Burma/Myanmar

WP:CONSISTENCY gives an exception to ENGVAR for proper names. The Burma article is in British English and Burma is preferred by British English. Suppose Myanmar is the common name. Is it okay to primarily refer to it within the article as Myanmar even though it is in British English? Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 09:27, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't really have anything to do with British vs. American English linguistic/style differences. According to Burma#Etymology, it's about which countries recognize the authority of the current military government, who renamed the country to Myanmar. The UN does recognize it as Myanmar, but the UK, US, and Canada do not, and continue to regard it as Burma, according to the article. I don't know whether the UN's recognition (without US and UK) should be sufficient to change enwiki's naming – I just wanted to clarify that it's a political, not a language, issue. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 17:36, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
(Suppose) media and popular usage does not follow the official usage. Then what? Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 09:55, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
See my comment below. Rich Farmbrough, 11:59, 1 October 2012 (UTC).
Looking at Google Ngrams [3][4][5] there don't seem to be substantial differences between English varieties: in all of them Burma dominates (though many of them will be mentioning the country in an historical context and hence shouldn't count – cf this; any idea how to tell them apart in Ngram results?). As for the general principle, I'd say that in article titles at least, if Word A is somewhat common in both Dialect X and Dialect Y whereas Word B is very common in Dialect X but very rare in Dialect Y, we'd better use Word A, as per WP:COMMONALITY. — A. di M.  17:19, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
nGrams are only for publications through 2008. I don't think this is sufficient in this case, given the significant changes in 2010-11. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 15:19, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
When referring to official documents or the country's presence in international fora, it would seem appropriate to use Myanmar. When referring to the nation, its people, and its history, it is best to use Burma. However, in both cases, the first mention within an article should maybe have a parenthetical note or a comma-separated clarification that it is also known by the other name. National Geographic uses Myanmar (Burma) for their official page on the country. —Zujine|talk 06:03, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
Yes, that kind of makes sense (much like when to use “Republic of China” vs “Taiwan”, etc.). — A. di M.  00:27, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
The country is historically named Burma. A possibly illegitimate government then renamed it to Myanmar. I would tend to favor retaining the existing name Burma for that reason. I could also see this as being a legitimate use of a slash – Burma/Myanmar (with redirects from both individual names to it). —[AlanM1(talk)]— 19:27, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
No, using a slash in the title is about as awful as it can get. I'd rather flip a coin than use that. — A. di M.  00:27, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
No the article should consistently (except when discussing naming, or in quotations) use one name. Should common usage clearly favour one or the other name the article could be moved to the common name. The usage in the article is not subject to WP:COMMONNAME in the way the title is. Rich Farmbrough, 12:00, 1 October 2012 (UTC).
No, I'm pretty sure that referring to the same country as Gaul when talking about the 1st century and as France when talking about the 20st century, even in the same article, is perfectly appropriate; same applies to Persia/Iran, Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul, etc. So in principle it would make perfect sense to refer to the same country as Burma or Myanmar depending on what time period you're talking about – except that there don't seem to be that many people using the name “Myanmar” when referring to any time period and Wikipedia ought to follow common usage rather than lead it. — A. di M.  14:49, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
It's my general impression that Myanmar is more popular now. FWIW, searching Google News for 2012-01-01 through 2012-10-02:
  • 130,000 hits for "Myanmar" -"Burma"
  • 27,000 hits for "Burma" -"Myanmar"
I can see using Burma for the time period before the renaming, naming the article Myanmar (with a ref to Burma and the controversy in the lead), based on current usage. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 17:46, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

MOS:CONSECUTIVE

Recommend changing "Where a proper noun that includes terminal punctuation ends a sentence" to "Where a proper name that includes terminal punctuation ends a sentence". Technically a noun is a single word, and does not include any punctuation. Names can include punctuation. Apteva (talk) 05:12, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

A noun is a part of speech, and need not be word. Rich Farmbrough, 12:28, 1 October 2012 (UTC).
There has been a recent-ish push to make proper nouns words only (starting with this edit, but churning throughout May, June, and July). -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:52, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
This is a common linguistic convention, not just some Wikipedia idiosyncrasy.
  • "We may therefore draw a distinction between a PROPER NOUN, which is a single word, and a NAME, which may or may not consist of more than one word." [Quirk et al.: A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, p.288)
  • ". . . Proper nouns, by contrast, are word-level units belonging to the category noun. Clinton and Zealand are proper nouns, but New Zealand is not.. . . Proper nouns function as heads of proper names, but . . ." [Huddlsleston and Pullum: The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language].
Part of speech is traditionally a synonym for a class of word. Nouns should be distinguished from noun phrases.
--Boson (talk) 21:40, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
Common, but not universal (see Oxford Companion to the English Language). The idiosyncrasy is not Wikipedia's. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:10, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
Clearly name and noun are synonyms, but technically a noun refers to a single word. Random House in 2012 uses as examples for proper noun "Lincoln, Sarah, Pittsburgh, and Carnegie Hall". Proper noun is older than proper name and appeared around 1890. A 1961 dictionary has both, with the definition of proper name being proper noun, and the definition of proper noun being a noun that is a name (I am paraphrasing). Only if you want to specify "I am not talking about names that consist of only one word, but those that are more than one word" would it be clearer to use "proper name", but either proper name or proper noun can interchangeably be used. For those born before, say, 1920 saying "proper name" is going to sound strange, as "thing-a-majig" is not a proper name, but "carburetor" is a proper name, and only proper nouns get capitalized. But since when did we start writing encyclopedia articles on every word and phrase in the dictionary? Due to the recentism of proper noun, let alone proper name, I withdraw the suggestion. Proper noun is fine. Apteva (talk) 22:32, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
Technically "United Kingdom" is not a noun phrase like "united kingdom" is, and "UK" is a (proper) noun, as is "United Kingdom". Technically, not all grammarians agree on this interpretation. Technically, a noun has no spaces in it only if we agree that that's what noun means. -- JHunterJ (talk) 22:52, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
To clarify the first comment, that noun is a part of speech, a noun phrase or a noun clause operates identically as a noun in a sentence. In the sentence: "He is ten feet tall is a common expression." The phrase "he is ten feet tall" acts as if it was a noun. A noun phrase is very different from a name. A name is a combination of one or more words with or without punctuation (that much is the same as a noun phrase), which names something - that part is different. Apteva (talk) 22:40, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
The sentence would be
"He is ten feet tall" is a common expression.
with quotation marks (double or single). That's not the typical compound word (post office, swimming pool, wide receiver) or noun phrase (little lamb, everywhere that Mary went). Compound words such as swimming pool or United Kingdom are not different from a name. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:19, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
The advice itself appears wrong to me. The example sentence, involving the band "What is this?", appears to be a question, when it is not. I think it should be changed. --Trovatore (talk) 22:39, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Relying on the presence or absence of spaces in conventional orthography to determine whether something is a compound noun or a noun phrase (regardless of whether "proper" or not) is highly unreliable. This ngram shows that "goatherder" and "goat herder" are more-or-less equally common, but they are the same entity regardless of spelling. Compound words are usually distinguished from noun phrases by stress and intonation patterns. However, this is surely all irrelevant. MOS:CONSECUTIVE is about the use of consecutive punctuation marks; it's irrelevant how the first of these arises. The important advice is (a) don't have duplicated full stops/periods or any other punctuation marks at the end of sentences (b) avoid misleading the reader, which the example involving the band "What is this?" does, as Trovatore correctly notes. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:49, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Attempted deletion of 2 commas by Special:Contributions/121.45.223.144

Please, look to User talk: Incnis_Mrsi #WP:_Manual_of_Style. Commas clearly make sense for me, but I'm not a native speaker. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 09:04, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Moved that discussion here: Apteva (talk) 16:18, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi,

You recently reverted my change (deletion of comma) on Wikipedia:Manual of Style, with the comment: 

"nope. Commas mark the end of an enumeration".

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AManual_of_Style&diff=515271481&oldid=515258747

I don't see what enumerations have to do with that change- in the following sentence, if you remove the parenthetic phrase then the comma (directly after the closing parenthesis) is clearly superfluous.

The English-language titles of compositions (books and other print works, songs and other audio works, films and other visual media works, paintings and other artworks, etc.), are given in title case, in which every word is given an initial capital except for certain less important words.

Anyway, no worries, but if you do have a second look at that change, I would be interested in any of your comments (perhaps I have missed something). (by the way, please post any responses here rather than my user page as my IP address can change).

Thanks, 121.45.223.144 (talk) 08:26, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

[6] nope. Commas mark the end of an enumeration. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 07:54, 30 September 2012 (UTC)
In my opinion, in the first case the IPuser is correct, the comma is redundant and interrupts the flow of the sentence "paintings and other artworks, etc.), are given in title case" in a manner that is not expected. For example, if you take out that long parenthetical, you get "The English-language titles of compositions, are given in title case" and there a comma looks quite odd. In the second case the comma is not necessary, and can be used to emphasize the phrase on its first appearance a little less strongly than using italics, but the emphasis is really not necessary. Apteva (talk) 16:18, 30 September 2012 (UTC)
Yes, the IP is correct that those commas should not be there. I took them back out. Dicklyon (talk) 16:35, 30 September 2012 (UTC)
I would, however, like to encourage Incnis Mrsi, because there are areas where it is extremely helpful to have someone who knows ru. Apteva (talk) 18:01, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

RFC:Largest cities or city population templates

There is a Request for comment about the utility/redundancy of Largest cities/city population templates. This is an open invitation for participating in the request for comment on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/City population templates. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. Mrt3366(Talk?) (New thread?) 08:04, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

"a" vs "an"

The word designating the unity of single items (as in the example sentences "one is a number" and "Moses made an appeal") takes variably the forms "a" and "an".

The Guide does not give guidance on the correct, or recommended, use; such guidance is needed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.198.109.2 (talk) 02:54, 5 October 2012 (UTC) −

Should we also indicate that declarative sentences end with periods? I'm all for a comprehensive MoS, but that seems like overkill. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 02:59, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
I'm with TBOTL on this one. Manuals of style aren't comprehensive dictionaries or grammar guides. The MOS presumes a working knowledge of the English language, and generally only covers topics which may either be a) unclear or b) in dispute. The use of "a" and "an" is pretty straightforward and unambiguous in nearly all cases (except a few words which vary by dialect, such as "historical", which should be covered by WP:ENGVAR in any case). --Jayron32 03:04, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
English articles#Distinction between a and an covers this issue – no need to duplicate it (or the many other rules that make up English grammar). —[AlanM1(talk)]— 20:59, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
Putting a link to the article in the sentence might be good enough for now. Contributor, have you ever seen anyone on Wikipedia misusing a and an in a way that a MoS rule would fix? Because if nothing's broken... Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:10, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Disclaimer

Are there any guidelines on how to include disclaimers in articles? In a separate section or a footnote, at the start/end of the article,...? I am preparing an article here and would like to add a disclaimer "section/paragraph" saying roughly the following: Most of what is known about the rebellion including the exact dates are due to a single historical source, the Shoku Nihongi. [...some critical discussion on the reliability of this source...] All exact dates in this wikipedia article should therefore be taken with a grain of salt in view of their origin. bamse (talk) 09:00, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

There's WP:No disclaimers in articles, which should handle it. I'll have a look at your draft, but what you want to do is include somewhere in the article itself that the dates aren't certain; same thing we do with Ramanuja's purported age. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:21, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. So a separate section titled: "Historical source" or something like it would be fine? Should that go to the beginning or end of the article, or it does not matter? bamse (talk) 11:20, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
Probably the first paragraph after the lede section; that's what I've seen in most articles. However, if it fits better somewhere else (c.f. Old Tom Parr), go with wherever that is. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:33, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. bamse (talk) 09:08, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

RFC: shall changes in beginning of sentence case be allowed in quotations?

See Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 130#RFC: shall changes in beginning of sentence case be allowed in quotations? for a post archive closure of the RFC. Apteva (talk) 03:42, 8 October 2012 (UTC) NB: The closure was done here:[7] before the archive was moved. Apteva (talk) 03:54, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Resolving the underlying infobox "ownership" issue

The fact that "first major contributor gets to arbitrarily decided" idea proposed above isn't workable is only half the problem here, and not the root one. The other, which this proposal also tried to address, is that wikiprojects by and large do appear to believe that they have the authority to tell the entire editorship "thou must" or "thou shalt not" put an infobox on any article We the Project consider within our Holy Scope. They need to be rapidly and unmistakably disabused of this notion before this situation gets any worse. So, the underlying issue this proposal tried to address is a real problem and remains unaddressed with this proposal's failure (because it reached too far in the opposite direction).

I propose that we add a statement to the effect that no editor or group of editors can force this issue, and that it's up to a consensus of the editors at the article, on a per-article basis, just like almost all other editorial decisions on Wikipedia.

(PS: I rather wish we'd scrap the entire WikiProject system and replace it with something that forbids any kind of "club"-like model - no "members" or "participants", no "projects", just pages of recommendations arrived at by a consensus of editors who care, on how to address particular topics. But that's another issue for another time and place.)

— SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 22:55, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Can you provide links to places where this has happened? (I'm not doubting you, I'm just interested in reading what the debate looked like in those instances.) Tdslk (talk) 00:54, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
See Classical music, and preceding comments in First major contributor, above. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:17, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
We already have WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. A link to that should suffice; though the problem is not that we don't have a policy, but that some editors are allowed to ignore it, for the sake of a quiet life. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:22, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
The rule you want already exists, or nearly does: "If discussion cannot determine which style to use in an article, defer to the style used by the first major contributor." The first choice is a consensus of editors at the individual article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:21, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
I was asked to comment again. That is not the consensus. The consensus that is followed in practice in WP is that once it is decided to use infoboxes on a particular type of article then the decision stands until consensus changes, and affects every article in scope. It does not go article by article. In particular, there is general consensus throughout WP to use infoboxes for people in as standardized and generalized a way as possible across all the relevant wikiprojects; that nobody is compelled to make such an infobox when writing an article, but that if they do not, someone will add it. (I understood the original proposal here to be challenging that, and I understand that challenge to be rejected. If the wording of the MOS needs to be changed to make it clear that they are not optional, I make such a proposal.) DGG ( talk ) 15:44, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
Thats way off - I hope others dont see things this way as conflict will only issue - Wiki projects don't own articles in anyway and it does go article by article as seen at Using infoboxes in articles. We have tried to fix this ownership problem many times over the years, but still have statements like "should not be used without first obtaining consensus on the article's talk page" that is a clear violation of our Editing policy and Be bold. To think our editor will see some odd WP advice page before they edit is just crazy and has lead to many many conflicts.Moxy (talk) 17:52, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
Not to mention in-article comments instructing people not to use infoboxes, which are a blatant defiance of the outcome of the RfC called by members of that project in a vain attempt to enforce their preference. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:08, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
Quote - "Whether to include an infobox, which infobox to include, and which parts of the infobox to use, is determined through discussion and consensus among the editors at each individual article". There seems to be a drive here that all articles must have infoboxes, and that the editors of an article or members of wikiprojects have no say whatsoever about what the content or format of infoboxes, which people here appear to want to be set centrally as part of MOS and be immune from all challenge. Why should MOS (effectively a Wikiproject itself) have supremacy and be allowed to dictate things if no-one else is? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nigel Ish (talk • contribs) 18:32, 22 September 2012‎
Quote =Nigel Ish "a drive here that all articles must have infoboxes" and "the editors of an article or members of wikiprojects have no say whatsoever about what the content or format of infoboxes" - All that would be the opposite of what the policy says that you have just quoted. All content and format disputes should be discussed at the individual article level first - then proceed to outside the article if not resolvable at the article level. No blanket rules by a group of editors should prevail over talking about what is best for each article at each article!Moxy (talk) 19:45, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
The quote is what the guidance currently says - the following comments are my take on what the regulars here appear to be doing in trying to force a Wikipedia wide standard for infoboxes onto all articles, with the appearance of trying to override any objections either at the article and ignore any issues that wikiprojects raise, whether based on valid subject related reasons or not.Nigel Ish (talk) 20:18, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
Oh sorry that was not clear to me.... but yes you are correct that the majority think infoboxes are beneficial thus an asset to our readers.Moxy (talk) 20:29, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

I just want to comment to say I agree with DGG's analysis above. The current practice is that once there is agreement that a certain type (topic) of article should have an infobox, we do indeed put infoboxes on all articles of that type. This is not the same, for example, as citations, where different articles of the same type could have different citation styles. But I also agree that the MOS is not the place to decide what infobox to use. For many topics it would be better decided by a wikiproject. For types of articles that span many wikiprojects (e.g. biographies), the discussion should be on the village pump. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:37, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

MOSQUOTE vs PERCENT

WP:MOSQUOTE reads "a few purely typographical elements of quoted text should be adapted to English Wikipedia's conventions without comment" and later "Spaces before punctuation such as periods and colons: these should be removed as alien to modern English-language publishing.". In to my opinion this includes and percent numbers. For instance if a quote includes something like "15 %" it should be changed to "15%" per WP:PERCENT. Am I right? -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:30, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

I would consider this a minor typographic change that does not involve any qualitative change to the underlying quote. -- Ohconfucius ping / poke 10:19, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
It can also be considered as conversion to house-style. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:46, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
(As the editor who raised the altering of the citation quote= with Magioladitis) I'd be happy to see WP:PERCENT linked in WP:MOSQUOTE under the list of minor typographic changes, and preferably for WP:MOSQUOTE to explicitly make a statement on citation quote= applicability. The general altering of citations literals in title= and quote= by semi-automated/WP:MEATBOT methods can be problematic though, as can be seen by the examples in [8]. —Sladen (talk) 11:35, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
"Spacing in quotes can be altered to comply with WP:PERCENT and WP:TIME" would be suffice? -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:05, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
"WP:TIME" might be too broad as it includes date-reformatting. Perhaps the test would be whether a reformatting change would prevent the locating of the original citation; so removing a space in "15 %" to get "15%" probably doesn't impair locating of a source much; but renaming the title= of a work from "25 October - The Romanian Armed Forces' Day" to "October 25 - The Romanian Armed Forces' Day" significantly changes the ability to find that work by that name in an alphabetical card index, or Google. The second paragraph of following WP:TIME shortlinks talks about date reformatting, so perhaps that is possibly too broad. Perhaps the simplest would be to encourage quotation reformatting when used in the main body of an article, but even to go as far as to discourage reformatting within the {{reflist}} as the references aren't there to be read, but are there to allow the reader to locate additional reliable information easily. This would allow cases where a reformatted quotation is used inline, but the "raw material" is left untouched in the quote=. It could even be suggested that in the case of extensive reformatting of a quotation in the body, that the original can be preserved in the {{cite}} for clarity. —Sladen (talk) 15:54, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
Ah yes, You are right. I only meant the addition of non breaking space in 12-hour time. And In general I am referring only to addition/removal of whitespace. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:11, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
Since you say "Spacing in quotes" I think it is perfectly fine, and the dates stuff is not relevant. Rich Farmbrough, 22:12, 6 October 2012 (UTC).
Please do correct the space. And commas reversed with periods in numbers, as the continental Europeans do, and currency symbols after and spaced rather than before and unspaced. Tony (talk) 03:45, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
I disagree with making changes inside quotations. For what purpose? The advice of changing curly quotes with straight quotes and single quotes is fine, but spaces? Why? And "commas reversed with periods"? There is nothing wrong with that style, no matter how strange it may look. If the quote is really wrong [sic] can be used, but it should not be changed. Apteva (talk) 04:56, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
So no, "Spacing in quotes can be altered to comply with WP:PERCENT and WP:TIME" should not be added for two reasons - it is bad advice and it adds nothing to the MOS. If it said "spacing in quotes can not be altered" that would be one thing, but of course spaces are sometimes altered. Saying that something "can be altered" says nothing. It implies that they can also not be altered, and if someone alters them they might have done it appropriately or might not have. So what good is it? None at all. Apteva (talk) 05:03, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
What about "Spacing in quotes must be altered to comply with WP:PERCENT and WP:TIME" then? The problem is that it is optional? -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:15, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
No, the question is why would anyone want to refract a quote. It is no longer a quote. Apteva (talk) 22:02, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
Manual of Style reads "This practice of conforming typographical styling to a publication's own "house style" is universal." -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:12, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
And that statement in the MOS is simply false. It is not universal practice, especially in respect of more substantive changes to formatting and typography. N-HH talk/edits 22:23, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
I disagree. Usually a quote is written in a book in the first place just following the rules of the given book. Or it appears in some media again following the rules of the given media. I've never seen a a quote in any of the popular internet media to follow different writing style than the rest of the site/portal/media. The same should hold here. Having or not having a space between a number and the percent symbol is only a matter of preference and the quote should be written following the Wikipedia Manual of Style. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:57, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Magioladitis. N-HH is ignoring the word "this" in the MOS statement. It isn't any change in formatting and typography that is universal practice, it is the specific changes listed in the MOS that are universal practice. Jc3s5h (talk) 23:03, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

I understand what it is trying to say perfectly thanks; nor is it likely that the precise stipulations of one MOS reflect "universal practice". As to the first response, it may well happen "usually" (although I doubt anecdotal evidence can show that conclusively). Equally, WP may decide to have an MOS that inists we do things that way. However, it is simply not a universal practice - that explicit statement is simply not true. N-HH talk/edits 23:11, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
Then delete it. It clearly adds nothing to the MOS. It is an explanation of why it is done and looks a little foolish pretending to be universal. Here is why I do not think we need to be more explicit about refractoring quotes than to remove all caps. A politician gets quoted exactly as they say something no matter what they say, swear words included. If they misspell a word, we use [sic], but we do not correct it. If they use incorrect punctuation we can add a parenthetical, but we do not correct it. There are just too many quotes where the punctuation is an important part of the quote for us to be "universally" changing it, just to make it look pretty. I want to know if a politician knows the difference between a hyphen and an endash or whether to put a space before a % sign (or how to spell potato). I do not want us to make corrections like that inside a quote whether they are a politician or not. I want to see what punctuation Thoreau used or Dickens. Apteva (talk) 06:40, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Use of   with ellipses and dashes

I don't get this. How is

France, Germany,
... and Belgium

worse than

France,
Germany, ... and Belgium

(or the analogous case with dashes)? —Tamfang (talk) 19:52, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Maybe that example should be chucked in favor of a better example. I see NBSP used a lot between units and their values. Apteva (talk) 20:08, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
That's listed too, and I agree it's worthwhile. —Tamfang (talk) 20:15, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
  is used in many situations enumerated at WP:NBSP. The question is whether we should also use it in front of every ellipsis. If we should, I have often complained that the WP:ELLIPSIS phrase "only as needed" is misleading because it goes on to say the nbsp is necessary with each normal use of an ellipsis. Art LaPella (talk) 20:17, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
Art, I recall that this was discussed before. I said then, and say again now, that the point is accurately expressed with the present wording. A   may indeed be advisable with every ellipsis; but where does it go? Sometimes before, sometimes after – only as needed to prevent improper line breaks. No, we should not use it in front of every ellipsis. In this case, we need one only after the ellipsis:

These were his exact words: "... we are still worried".

That's to avoid this happening:

These were his exact words: "...
we are still worried".

But in this case we need a hard space only before the ellipsis:

"Are we going to France ...?" he asked.

And that's to avoid this happening:

"Are we going to France
...?" he asked.

In a third case, the hard space after the ellipsis is overkill, because there is no harm in a break that may occur there:

"France, Germany, ... and Belgium"

This is fine:

"France, Germany, ...
and Belgium"

The ellipsis guideline may need minor fixes to explain things better. I've said that for a long time! But the guidance itself is pretty standard, and robustly adapted for online use. Compare the shockingly poor treatment of ellipses in CMOS, which has improved only a little in CMOS16.
Similar points can be made about a spaced en dash (in any of its uses). When one is used in punctuating a sentence, for example, it marks some sort of a break in sense from what precedes it – like the effect of a colon, perhaps. It's preferable not to have that dash turning up at the start of the next line, almost as we would not want a colon wrapping to the next line. Sometimes it makes little difference; but sometimes it looks awful and might obscure the meaning. In online work, we do not know how different text will be rendered on different browsers with different individual settings (window size, text size, and so on). So the guidelines must be more foolproof that those for more static printed text, traditionally in the hands of professional typesetters.
♫♪
NoeticaTea? 22:47, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
Yes, I noted that it was discussed before. No, I didn't say "in front of every ellipsis"; I said "each normal use of an ellipsis". "normal" refers to the "France, Germany, ... and Belgium" situation, which I encounter as a proofreader much more often than the other cases. If you disagree about which use of the ellipsis is most common, I will prepare statistics. I'm not talking about rewriting the whole guideline. Can we simply remove the misleading word "only"? Art LaPella (talk) 22:58, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
We don't disagree on anything important then, Art – except that "only" is crucial, as I have once again explained. How is it misleading? I agree that you have trouble with it, and please don't get me wrong: that is important input! But I don't see the original poster having trouble with that word "only". Do you?
Why not draft an alternative text here, carefully laid out as it would appear in MOS itself, so we can work on this together?
NoeticaTea? 23:10, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
The original poster asked why we have an nbsp with an ellipsis at all. Why is a break after Germany worse than a break after France? I don't have an answer to that question. While explaining it, I mentioned my long-standing objection to "only". He didn't ask about that word, and I can't explain why nobody else objects to that word. One alternative text would be to simply omit the word "only", so I don't see what there is to lay out.
How is "only" misleading? From the standpoint of most editors other than MoS insiders, it is strange to use an nbsp at all. So their first reaction to using an nbsp only as needed, would be: why do we need it at all? It certainly wouldn't be: why don't we use it twice, both before and after the ellipsis? And yet the guideline goes on to recommend an nbsp with every ellipsis (apparently not just the main France Germany & Belgium case). It also explains that we don't use two nbsps, just in case anyone thinks we should. For most editors, an unexpected nbsp with every ellipsis is more of a "Wow!" than a "What, only one?" I believe my previous analogy was "Use a space suit in space only as needed, for example if you want to breathe." Art LaPella (talk) 23:57, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for clarifying, Art. Three points in answer:
  • To the original poster: It's just a norm of good typesetting that the indication of an omission should come before any linebreak, so that the fact and the context of the omission are immediately apparent to the reader. Such norms are respected by some publishers and not others. Penguin, I think, is happy for all sorts of punctuation to shift to the start of the next line. But the long-standing practice here has been to respect such norms, especially with judicious use of  .
  • Art, if you think that removing the word "only" would help, I will not object. But I think we should then give one or two examples of undesirable breaks that the use of   will avoid. Perhaps those that I offer above, yes?
  • In reviewing an archived RM for Halley's Comet I came across a live example that is relevant here, where I had failed to use   and the line did indeed break badly on my screen, at the end of a quote like this:

"[The initial letter of a word
...]."

(Just to demonstrate that the less "normal" cases do occur.)
NoeticaTea? 06:53, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
How would a line break after "Germany" make the omission and its context less apparent to the reader? What's next, "to do" (i.e., avoiding a –ha ha– split infinitive)? —Tamfang (talk) 08:31, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
Something like the way having a period, a question mark, or a closing parenthesis or quotation mark at the start of a line would. The ellipsis is different in its precise logic from each of those, and a sentence-punctuating dash is different again. But there are relevant similarities here. Also, note that I did not speak of the omission and its context being more or less apparent; I spoke of immediacy: "... so that the fact and the context of the omission are immediately apparent to the reader." Often it's like that: the reader can be delayed, irritated, or distracted if the information doesn't come quickly and naturally, or just where it is expected.
I don't make the norms, and I didn't design human perceptual psychology☺; but I have made efforts to understood both, and both are relevant to good punctuation and good disposition of text on a page or a screen.
NoeticaTea? 08:52, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
My answer didn't get saved last night. "examples of undesirable breaks" I usually don't object to adding more explanation, but since you asked, it would add a lot of text without explaining anything I missed. I can easily imagine that omitting an nbsp can result in a line break at that location. But if you think readers need more explanation, it should go at WP:NBSP because it is explaining how nbsp works. Or you could explain some things about nbsp that really are mystifying: it assumes we all recognize bad line breaks when we see them, but in practice I add nbsp only in places that closely resemble the examples, rather than try to guess what the consensus may be on this page, or worse, the consensus on the page I'm editing. Is this related to "only", or is it a separate idea? I don't see how removing "only" would make examples more helpful, because "only" makes sense only to editors who were somehow expecting multiple nbsps, and we already have a red-colored example discouraging multiple nbsps. Art LaPella (talk) 20:21, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Disruption is not tolerated

Extended content
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

was: "Apteva needs to stop the disruption now" Apteva (talk) 03:28, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

(I am restoring this section that was blanked by Apteva. Users are reminded that this page is under ArbCom sanction, as indicated by the notice at the top of the page. --Neotarf (talk) 08:35, 13 October 2012 (UTC))

In recent weeks, User:Apteva has been the most active contributor to this talk page, pushing his idiosyncratic theory about hyphens, dashes, and proper names. He has started at least three RMs based on this theory. As far as I can see, he has not been able to convince anyone to buy into his theory, and his RMs have been roundly opposed, as have his proposals here. I have not had time to read everything that he has written here recently, but on scanning it appears to be just same old same old. I think the vigorous pushing has become too disruptive, and needs to stop now. Does anyone agree, or have a good idea how to encourage a good resolution to this dead horse? Dicklyon (talk) 06:44, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree that his or her behaviour has become disruptive, and I agree that something might need to be done about it. I hold off from concrete suggestions, for the moment.
NoeticaTea? 07:03, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
I would also point out the comments of IP user 146.90.43.8 / 67.208.235.66. This user, as IP 146.90.43.8, has made multiple changes and reverts to the project page without consensus. --Neotarf (talk) 09:02, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
Pardon? Would you care to expand on that? 146.90.43.8 (talk) 20:27, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
See WP:CONSENSUS if you don't understand the term. The rest appears to be fairly clear. --Walter Görlitz (talk)
I've made two edits to the project page. The consensus for them derived from an RfC which ran for over a month. I understand the term. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 21:01, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

I have restored this section again, after Apteva collapsed/hid it as "off topic". The question before MOS editors is whether anyone supports what he is trying to do here, or if not whether they have good ideas how to help bring the disruption to an end. Of course, if he stops, no further comment or escalation is needed. Dicklyon (talk) 22:18, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

What does it matter if someone started a retread thread? If that's a disruption, then it's the type of disruption that talk pages are for. Let people go on if they want. Hiding or changing other people's posts might be a problem, though. There are legitimate reasons to move an off-topic post, but that can be abused.
EDIT: Upon examining the change in question, I concur that Apteva was wrong to collapse the question about whether a user was violating the MoS. However, Apteva might simply have not known that such questions are acceptable here. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:45, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Hyphen examples

Google books
Name Hyphen endash Percent
Julia Louis-Dreyfus 51 0 100%
Spanish-American War
Mexican-American War 172 5 97.2%
Philippine-American War
Wilkes-Barre 50 0 100%
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport
Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport
Comet Hale-Bopp 52 5 91%
comet Hale–Bopp 19 7 73%
Comet Hale Bopp 1 0 100%
Bose–Einstein statistics 5 5 50%
male–female height 4 2 67%
1914–18 1 9 10%
1941-45

Birds do not need checking, as they are specifically mentioned.

Google scholar
Name Hyphen endash Percent
Mexican-American War
Comet Hale-Bopp 12 31
comet Hale-Bopp 92 10

[Apteva neglected to sign the preceding.–NoeticaTea? 08:08, 12 October 2012 (UTC)]

[The above is available as a scratch pad and does not need to be signed. Apteva (talk) 20:38, 12 October 2012 (UTC)]

The purpose of the MOS is to help improve the encyclopedia. The purpose of this section is to answer the question, is an endash ever used in a proper noun/proper name? A couple of dozen examples one way or the other should be sufficient. The criteria is, do a majority of books using that term use one punctuation or the other? The purpose of the MOS is not to determine what any particular punctuation should be. The purpose of the MOS is to reflect commonalities so that new articles can be added that are consistent. For example, at one time a guideline said that all species names used all capitalized words - Grizzly bear would be Grizzly Bear, Brook Trout, House Wren, etc., etc., and three examples of birds were provided. The veracity of always capitalizing all species common names was questioned, and the guideline was tagged as disputed. Quite some time later there are still some species that are being moved from capitalization. Bird names, though, actually are capitalized, as maybe some other types of species, particularly fish and in botany. But those questions are not answered here, or at WP:TITLE, but at each species, and whatever seems to be a commonality can then be summarized in the appropriate guideline or policy. Why are punctuation questions answered at articles and not in policy or guideline discussions? Because there are always exceptions and the discussion of is it an exception belongs at the article affected. Apteva (talk) 16:21, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

This is utterly pointless. As I've said every time this silly debate comes up, Google searching is not useful here, because the results are skewed. Hyphens are **overwhelmingly** more common in online prose, because hyphens are right there on the keyboard, and dashes are not. These search stats are completely meaningless. It's like going to a rave to do statistical research on how many people wear suits after 10pm. You'll be unlikely to find one at all, but the sample isn't statistically useful. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 03:10, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
I am only looking at books, not the web. Books are typeset. Google ignores punctuation in the search, but the results can be checked. If anyone else has any better place to search that can be done as well and the results compared. Also, some terms that are known to be correctly spelled with an endash will show if the google search confirms that punctuation. Apteva (talk) 04:59, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

ANI discussion

An ANI discussion related to this page, in particular about the recent RFC, has been initiated by IP user 146.90.43.8 at WP:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Is it reasonable to have my integrity questioned and my edits reverted because I am an ip?. --Neotarf (talk) 14:00, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks very much for letting us know, Neotarf. I missed this earlier, because Apteva hid it!
My intention is, if the RFC is not set aside as a hopelessly confused jumble from the very start, to request an ArbCom case to sort the whole thing out. I have joined that ANI discussion to alert admins to that intention.
Unfortunately I may not be able to respond fast to developments. I am away from my usual resources, and busy with urgent matters in real life.
♥
NoeticaTea? 02:02, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
Yes, I noticed your earlier mention of some situation, a family emergency I presume, I hope things are well for you on that front; but of course these things happen to us all and when they do, there is no alternative but to drop everything else. I will probably soon be away from internet access for an extended time as well. Too bad that those who wish to revisit the dash-hyphen matter again so soon chose this exact time frame to start a new push; it is also a very busy time in academia. I would wish to participate in such an Arbcom discussion, otherwise I fear another three wiki-years will be spent trying to explain the concept of in-house style guides to those who take their authority from whatever advice they remember from their football coach or third grade teacher. There is much expertise among the editors here, as far as understanding the technical necessities of the ever-expanding array of devices people use to access the Wikipedia, at the same time, the people side of Wikipedia, "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit", has not kept up. You would think it would be enough to simply write an article and let the gnomes take care of the arcane details and the polishing, but unfortunately the gnomes seem to be spending more and more time here instead, trying to explain to those who demand repeated explanations but appear not to understand them. --Neotarf (talk) 09:39, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Species capitalization "asking the other parent" (2 cases)

 – Just a pointer to relevant discussions elsewhere. No comment here is needed

The perennial "capitalize a few but not most common names of species" issue that has been extensively debated here has been re-re-re-raised in two other forums simultaneously, over at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (capitalization)#Proposal: Bird names and Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion#Wikipedia:Naming conventions (birds), principally by User:Apteva, though a few other familiar faces on this issue, like User:KimvdLinde and User:Natureguy1980 make their reappearances. The issue is particularly relevant to WT:MOS because, especially at the NC discussion, a case is being made (again; see above on hyphenation) that WP:AT and it's NC subpages trump MOS because AT is policy, and should make up their own completely independent style rules. Yes, really. This is obviously a misunderstanding of how policy works, but little has been said there to correct this misapprehension. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 13:37, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Internal consistency v consistency across articles

Collapse archived section

[I have restored this section just after it was archived; it includes argument that is relevant to the current RFC (see just below), which explicitly makes reference to it.–NoeticaTea? 08:10, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
Restored again, for the same reason.–NoeticaTea? 08:22, 11 October 2012 (UTC)]

Further information: Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_129 § Internal_consistency_v_consistency_across_articles


Noetica removed these words [See correction below.–Noetica ☺] – "though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole" – from this lead sentence:

An overriding principle is that style and formatting choices should be consistent within a Wikipedia article, though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole.

As the lead already mentions internal consistency, this sentence is arguably repetitive without the juxtaposition. More importantly, we don't require consistency across articles, and it's important to stress that. The lead currently implies that we do, or at least does not make clear that we don't:

  • "The MoS presents Wikipedia's house style, to help editors produce articles with consistent, clear, and precise language, layout, and formatting."
  • Consistency in language, style, and formatting promotes clarity and cohesion; this is especially important within an article.

Therefore, the addition of "though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole" (or similar) is needed. SlimVirgin (talk) 02:38, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

The first sentence of this section inadvertently misrepresents what happened. The sequence of events (all on 12 August 2012):

  • SlimVirgin restored some wording that had been long absent from MOS (diff)
  • Curb Chain reverted that restoration (diff)
  • Noetica restored what SlimVirgin had added, except for what Curb Chain objected to (diff)

Slim, would you please amend that first sentence? Best to keep the account accurate. ♥
NoeticaTea? 07:51, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

[Note: I have exhausted my reserves of time for dealing with this issue. I see that Slim did not make the factual correction I requested (see immediately above). For the RFC on this page (#RfC: Internal consistency versus consistency across articles), please refer to the detail in all of my submissions in this earlier section. I explain my temporary absence in that RFC. ☺NoeticaTea? 03:43, 7 September 2012 (UTC)]

Not needed. As these sentences in the lede show, consistency across articles is indeed important. Including your proposal is contradictory and will be a contention of confusion for editors.Curb Chain (talk) 05:10, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
You are mistaken there. Articles do not have a single standard style. When there are two or more acceptable styles, an article can use either of them: English/British spelling, BC/BCE, date formatting, citation style, etc. (this has been said by arbcom, for example here or here) There is no requirement to make all those articles consistent with each other.
The extra phrase is to prevent people from going in style-fixing sprees when they get the mistaken idea that articles need to be consistent among them. This is a real problem that caused many headaches and arbitration cases. For example Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/jguk_2#Findings_of_fact, where someone tried to ensure BC/BCE consistency across articles. A more recent case is Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Date_delinking where people used scripts to adapt hundreds of articles to their preferred style. --Enric Naval (talk) 06:59, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
No Enric, Curb is not mistaken. As things stand, there is nothing in the Manual to support such a spree. If MOS supported campaigns to impose one style choice uniformly across Wikipedia, from among options, it would say so. It would not single out consistency within articles, as it does now. Indeed, it would not present options at all!
Consider three propositions:
P1: There is a hard requirement for consistency within articles, where MOS presents options.
P2: There is no hard requirement for consistency between articles, where MOS presents options.
P3: In groups of articles on similar topics, similar styling is better than an unprincipled or random selection of styles.
Who disagrees with any of those, and why? (Not a rhetorical question.)
We might regard P3 as a motive for our glittering array of subsidiary MOS pages, naming conventions, informal conventions out there in the projects, and so on. It starts as an unspoken presumption; and then, many specialists make it explicit for their own fields.
I think we should not send a message against efforts to unite groups of articles in that established way. I am yet to see an argument that such groups of articles (often cross-linked, often cited together) are improved by a perceived licence for each to take its own independent direction, subject only to the whim of editors narrowly focused on a single article rather than a thematically united group of articles.
NoeticaTea? 07:51, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
I agree with Noetica's general principles here, but would formulate the propositions to take account of the following.
  • for P1 and P2, "where MOS presents options or is silent".
  • for P3 I think we should make it clear that consistency is expected for closely-related articles (and try to establish that if anyone is inclined to disagree).
Of course, how closely articles are related can be a matter for discussion. Authors should be relatively free to agree the appropriate scope for any consistency.
Apart from being general common sense, an appropriate degree of consistency both enhances the user experience and makes it easier for editors to make corresponding changes everywhere where they are needed.
Nobody should be able to say "MOS says that articles do not have to be consistent with each other" as a pro forma excuse to block changes among such closely-related articles. At the same time we should emphasise that editors should establish consensus before making extensive changes. --Mirokado (talk) 09:51, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
I disagree. The MoS does not require articles, even articles in the same Wikiproject, to match each other, so it is perfectly okay to say so. "Let's make this article match a related one" is not, by itself, sufficient reason for a change in style. However, "I feel like it, I raised it on the talk page, and no one objected within a reasonable time frame," is sufficient reason. To use the language of the thread, we should not put P3 in the MoS. 1. We shouldn't add rules to the MoS unless there is a real reason to do so, like a) said rule is part of the English language or b) adding said rule would solve a non-hypothetical problem and 2. Enric Naval has provided evidence that attempts to enforce cross-article consistency have caused non-hypothetical problems on Wikipedia. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:42, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
Yes, but adding such a rule will allow editors to WP:WIKILAWYER.Curb Chain (talk) 01:17, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
With what do you disagree exactly, Darkfrog? I don't read Mirokado as saying that any version of P3 should be actually included in MOS. P3 is just a proposition that we are invited to consider. On the other hand, if you disagree with P3 itself, will you please tell us why?
I would in effect reverse your judgement on the two reasons you mention, like this:
  • "Let's make this article match a related one" presents an excellent reason for a change in style.
  • "I feel like it, I raised it on the talk page, and no one objected within a reasonable time frame" is never a sufficient reason for making a change in the style of an article.
To use the reason that you favour (the second reason cited here) is contrary to current provisions in MOS, at MOS:RETAIN:

When an English variety's consistent usage has been established in an article, it is maintained in the absence of consensus to the contrary.

That wording makes good sense. Some talkpages are sparsely attended; but the article in question might have a style that fits well with related articles, for example. A positively expressed consensus should be required, to overturn such valuable consistency.
NoeticaTea? 01:33, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
I disagree with Mirokado's statement, "Nobody should be able to say "MOS says that articles do not have to be consistent with each other" as a pro forma excuse to block changes among such closely-related articles." Yes, they should be able to state that the MoS does not require inter-article consistency and use that to block changes among closely related articles. People should need a reason to make such changes. That reason need not be big. It can be "I feel like it, I raised it on the talk page, and no one objected." However, "We have to make these articles match because they're closely related in subject!" is false. No we don't have to.
I do not believe that we should add P3 to the MoS for the reasons that I stated yesterday. 1) We shouldn't add more rules without a good, non-hypothetical reason. 2) We don't have a good reason to add this rule; E. Naval even showed that we have a good reason not to. If pushing cross-article consistency causes trouble, then we shouldn't require people to push it, even if some people would prefer articles to be written that way.
As for the "I feel like it, I raised it, no one objected" rationale, if only one person has an opinion on the matter, than that person's opinion is the consensus. In that situation, 100% of the people involved would agree. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:04, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
The MOS is also a guide and set of pages to indicate to readers/editors which style to use when there are differing styles. We don't make rules to limit peoples' choices for the sake of limiting peoples' choices; we make rules, and the MOS's purpose, to make it easier for viewers to read our articles so there is some sort of consistency and so that readers can expect a sort of userfriendlyness versus a chaotic page-after-page styled encyclopedia. There is a way to block changes where people quote WP:IAR but that requires the use of WP:COMMON.Curb Chain (talk) 19:54, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
Maybe that's how it should work, CC, but it's not how it does work. 1. We should assume that anything written down in the MoS will be cited as gospel on article talk pages. 2. Because Wikipedia is a crowdsourced encyclopedia, giving people their freedom wherever reasonably possible, as in such proven policies as ENGVAR, allows disparate editors to contribute. Some inconsistency is worth it if it means we don't grossly insult Brits or Canadians or non-native-English-speaking contributors. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:48, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
ENGVAR already is sanctioned at MOS:RETAIN. We don't need this extra statement as it will be used by editors to disrupt pages per their own style.Curb Chain (talk) 13:17, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
It is about other things as well as WP:ENGVAR such as WP:CITE and WP:APPENDIX (and others such as date formats, table formats, quotation styles and any other style of format issue that an editor thinks should be "consistent"), so there is a need for the extra statement over and above the specific ENGVAR. -- PBS (talk)

I disagree with "In groups of articles on similar topics, similar styling is better than an unprincipled or random selection of styles." this has never been a requirement. The problem is what is a group? For example it could be argued that all articles about any subject within the countries of the EU should use British English/Irish English because the EU does. Or all articles on NATO (except those specifically about Britain and Canada) should use American English because the US is by far the largest contributor to NATO and therefore most articles about NATO are about American topics, and As NATO is deployed in Kosovo and Kosovo is not a member of th EU all articles about Kosova should be in American English. This type of argument has never been accepted.

One can see the fun one can have with arguments such as if its in a category its grouped in that category therefore it has to be consistent with all the other articles that appear in that category (An editor at the moment is using that as a justification for using his preferred spellings and ignoring usage in reliable sources). When an article appears in two categories then in which "group" does it belong?

This is why the MOS has only ever agreed that consistency should within an article, not across "groups" of articles.

I am with SV, EN and Darkfrog24 on this one. If as has been said "SlimVirgin restored some wording that had been long absent from MOS" then as it is a sentence that sums up a lot of Arbcom decisions, when was it deleted who deleted it and what was the justification given on this talk page for the deletion? -- PBS (talk) 10:15, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

That's a task for the history search where I pick half way between the latest and earliest version and see if the sentence was present or not and continue this process until I find the version where it was taken out. It doesn't always work, because there could be reverts in between or it could have been added and removed multiple times, but usually it does work. What instances where there that people were changing spelling styles according to like articles and not according to reliable sources?Curb Chain (talk) 20:45, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
But you miss the point, PBS. Please read the exchanges above with more care. The core suggestion is not they we insert P3 in MOS: "In groups of articles on similar topics, similar styling is better than an unprincipled or random selection of styles." I must say, I would be amazed if anyone disagreed with it as a statement considered in isolation. Do you disagree with it? In other words, do you prefer "an unprincipled or random selection of styles" in a group of articles (however defined)? For example, would you prefer that within a group of obviously related literary articles, these two forms be randomly selected: Dickens' novels; Dickens's novels?
With respect, PBS: perhaps you have neatly demonstrated the kind of confusion MOS should avoid inadvertently promoting, in the matter of consistency. Do not conflate "this has never been a requirement" [in MOS] and "this is a bad thing". Those problems you discuss with defining "group" are not weighty. Any competing systematic groupings among articles can be resolved by the appropriate projects, and agreements can be reached. Only if we actively seek difficulties, or manufacture them, can we expect possessive apostrophes to emerge as a casus belli in thematic groups of articles. Editors will generally prefer a consistent look and feel – and take pride not just in a single article but in the appealingly uniform style that greets the reader who follows links to similar ones.
That said, I have always favoured more singularity and less optional variability in MOS guidelines. Apart from British versus American, en dash versus em dash, and some other inevitable diversity, most variability in fundamental style is avoidable and detrimental. The community really does appreciate a well-considered standard that will settle disputes at the 4,000,000 articles. Look, I always prefer the spaced en dash for sentence punctuation, and always will. But I cheerfully use the em dash instead: and that includes across related articles, not just within them. If I got militant about it and sought to promote en dash regardless of such broad coherence, I would be doing a disservice to the readers. Let's all avoid such militancy; and let's not carelessly promote it by including unnecessary text that people will misread, and will use to justify disruption. And the fewer kinds of variability we have at the most basic level of style, the fewer opportunities we give to militants.
NoeticaTea? 21:00, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
"within a group of obviously related" Obviously related went out when it was agreed that article space would not support subpages ("/"). -- PBS (talk) 21:25, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
How about this: "Making this a requirement would be a bad thing." And Wikipedia has a long history of "guidelines" and other unofficial rules being treated like requirements. No, there should be no requirement or any unofficial resolution or declaration that could later be mistaken for one.
The more freedom/variability we have, the better. That way we don't insult people by claiming that their way of doing things is inferior. This is a crowdsourced project. The rule requiring intra- but not inter-article consistency is a good way to strike a balance between neatness and diversity.
Noetica, you state that making this into a rule would settle disputes in many articles. Can you offer evidence, as EN has offered evidence to the contrary? Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:58, 26 August 2012 (UTC)
Darkfrog, I cannot follow some of those points. Making what a requirement "would be a bad thing"? What does that answer, precisely? My point was general; but you seem to have something specific in mind. I do understand this though: "The more freedom/variability we have, the better." I appreciate your being consistent on that point. Unfortunately, maximising variability is not the business of MOS. Quite the opposite. A core function of any manual of style is to restrain variability in a principled and measured way, which improves the reader's experience. And freedom? A robust, clear, and consensual MOS has freed editors from many a wilderness, such as these archived disputes over Mexican–American War, which were only settled by the sharpening of WP:DASH that we achieved here in 2011. Remember those disputes? Wade through all of that archive! Or search for this: "consistent with itself", especially at the exchange following Enric Naval's "Oppose". Read all of that exchange. You will find him insisting on the same line as he does here. I had hoped that the lessons of Mex~Am War were well learned; but no. In that exchange see reference to this provision at WP:TITLE (it stood then and it stands now):

* Consistency – Titles follow the same pattern as those of similar articles. Many of these patterns are documented in the naming guidelines listed in the Specific-topic naming conventions box above, and ideally indicate titles that are in accordance with the principles behind the above questions.

That's the last of five points so salient that they bear this link: WP:CRITERIA. Why should we weaken its force with the "not necessarily" wording at MOS? My example, to answer Enric's evidence: Mexican–American War.
WP:TITLE and MOS have to be in harmony. This is achieved by WT:TITLE settling the choice of title (the wording, as the title would be spoken); and then almost all of the styling is delegated to MOS. As with any publisher. No other arrangement works. If the title were styled without consideration of MOS, we could not even achieve consistency within an article. The title would drift with the inconsistent and untrackable usage of "sources", but the text would follow recommendations at MOS. Or what?
NoeticaTea? 21:55, 26 August 2012 (UTC)
As I've said earlier in this discussion, I mean that making P3 into a requirement or having some sort of resolution stating "It is better for closely related articles to use the same styles" would be a bad thing.
Wikipedia is not a publisher the way other entities are. There's no chain of command. There's no understanding that things are one entity's opinion. The current rule requiring intra- but not inter-article consistency strikes a good balance between the benefits that you cite above and the insult that we would be doing our editors by requiring them to kowtow to other people's whims for no practical reason.
And in case this wasn't clear, let me explicitly state that I don't think that cross-article consistency should be banned, only that it should not be required. If someone writing an article wants to use the same style as any other article in Wikipedia, then he or she should go right ahead. If someone proposes this or any style change on a talk page and a consensus forms that the change would be beneficial, then they should have that option. However, what people should not be able to do is say "We must make these articles match each other because the MoS requires it of us." Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:18, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia is very like a publisher in the relevant respects: it assembles and edits material, and disseminates it in text and related forms to the public. Very early in its history, people decided that it needed a manual of style, in the manner of a publisher. MOS has existed continuously since then. Its role has been tested and certified again and again, as for example in this ArbCom finding of fact:

The English Wikipedia Manual of Style has been built from a number of pre-existing Manuals from numerous fields. The best practices from these have been combined to create a single, unique MOS that applies to articles on the English Wikipedia.(from Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Article titles and capitalisation)

I have repeatedly challenged people here to find a manual of style for collaborative web writing, editing, and publication that is more thoroughly considered, or more comprehensive, or more detailed than Wikipedia's MOS. Like it or not, WP:MOS and its subpages are in their own right a major style guide of our time.
If you object to that, or want to alter the role of MOS, make a proposal to do so. Good luck!
You speak of "kowtowing". No one is asked to do that. MOS is as consensual as we can make it, and a good deal more consensual than WP:TITLE (look at the troubles there at the moment, and over the last ten months), and even than WP:CONSENSUS itself (currently a hotbed of troubles, and recently placed under a month-long protection). If you object to following consensual guidelines, with the occasional application of WP:IAR where they fail to cover a particular set of circumstances, then make a case against guidelines at the village pump. Not here! Here we continue orderly development of a premier style guide for a very special purpose, unprecedented in history.
Finally, you write: "... what people should not be able to do is say 'We must make these articles match each other because the MoS requires it of us.' " That's right; and MOS does not require that. It is policy at WP:TITLE that comes closest to requiring that. Nor should MOS provide an argument for those who would twist its words in support of inconsistency between thematically related articles.
♪
NoeticaTea? 04:20, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
The current discussion is about which rules Wikipedia MoS should endorse. Wikipedia's difference from other entities that disseminate information—its crowdsourced nature—is relevant. People aren't getting paid. People are for the most part nonprofessionals and volunteers. "Do it because I'm the boss and I think A looks better than B" doesn't hold much water here. We have to treat people with respect, and that means not making them adhere to our whims. If we endorse something as a rule, and people are punished for not following it, that is "requiring people to kowtow," as I put it.
For the most part, the rules that are in the MoS weren't made up from scratch here. They were sourced from other, professionally compiled style guides. The majority of those style guides say "using a lowercase s in 'summer' is right and using a capital S is wrong." There's a difference between copying what can be said to be a rule of the English language and making stuff up on our own just to shove down other people's throats.
Do you know of any case in which someone claimed "The MoS requires that we use different styles in these articles"? Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:35, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
Darkfrog, of course I don't know of any such cases. No one is claiming that there are any, right?
Wikipedia is not simple anarchistic "crowd-sourcing"; it has policies and guidelines to ensure that a high-quality encyclopedia results. So what, if people are not paid? People have always engaged in voluntary work and subjected themselves to local restrictions and rules – for a better outcome. As I have said many times, the work of this talkpage is to make the best set of guidelines to help Wikipedia be the best possible encyclopedia. If that work is done well, MOS will earn respect. The community will decide on the value and status of MOS within the project that it serves. We cannot decide that here. But ArbCom has decided; and the quiet majority of editors seems to appreciate the consensually derived recommendations and standards that MOS encodes. When they are asked, which is rare enough. No one is "making them adhere to our whims". No one here compels anyone to do anything, in editing articles; and anyway, the guidelines should certainly not be "whims". If any one of them is, let it be challenged. I have challenged in that way from time to time, and I will again. WP:MOS itself ("MOS central") is in pretty good consensual shape, but there are problems at several other MOS pages.
NoeticaTea? 22:29, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
You said, "Nor should MOS provide an argument for those who would twist its words in support of inconsistency between thematically related articles." This caused me to wonder if perhaps you had seen a discussion in which someone thought that the MoS required different styles, "word twisting," as you put it.
By "people are not paid," I mean that at a regular publishing company, it is okay for one or a few people to hand down arbitrary decisions that could just as easily go the other way. This is because 1. the lower-ranking people are paid to put up with it and 2. the lower-ranking people can assume (sometimes with a great deal of benefit of the doubt) that higher rank was bestowed based on merit or seniority or something else that makes their supervisors worth heeding. Because Wikipedia doesn't have any of that, we should be extra careful that there is a good reason for every rule that we ram down people's gullets. "Y looks neater to me" invites the response, "Well X looks better to me." This is why I think we should be very cautious about adding new rules to the MoS. There are too many whims in it already. Maybe there shouldn't be whims in the MoS, but there are.Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:20, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
And if people can be brought up on AN/I for violating the MoS, then yes, that counts as "compelled." Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:27, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
Read more carefully the answers you have already been given, Darkfrog. I have responded patiently and at length; and at considerable cost in time and patience. No one here is making "rules that we ram down people's gullets"; MOS has guideline status, and is consensually developed. As I have said (see above):

"No one here compels anyone to do anything, in editing articles; and anyway, the guidelines should certainly not be 'whims'. If any one of them is, let it be challenged. I have challenged in that way from time to time, and I will again."

(I will run out of time for this, you know. ☺)
NoeticaTea? 03:44, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
What exactly is it that you want me to discern from your previous posts, Noetica? My last post, the one to which you're responding, consists entirely of my clarifying things that I had said to you. Did you mean to respond to my question about the M-A war article?
By "compelled" and "ram down people's gullets" I refer to anything that people can be punished or censured for disobeying, as in AN/I. The MoS may be only a guideline in theory, but in practice, it's a set of hard rules. That means that we should treat any new additions to the MoS as if they will be cited as gospel on talk pages.
By "whim," I mean any rule that offers no real benefit to Wikipedia. WP:LQ, for example, has been challenged repeatedly and it's still there, even though it directly contradicts the preponderance of reputable sources and discussions have failed to show that the ban of American punctuation gives Wikipedia any benefit. It is a lot easier to keep whims out of the MoS in the first place than to get them removed once they're there.
Bringing this back to the issue at hand, this is why I don't think that the MoS should endorse P3 either officially or unofficially unless someone can offer evidence that doing so would solve a problem that has actually happened. We'd be forcing people to follow rules that we made up solely because we felt like it, and that's a slap in the face. Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:33, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
There has never been style consistency across articles on WP, and the MoS makes that clear at various points (e.g. ENGVAR), as do other guidelines (e.g. CITEVAR). So the issue here is only that the lead should properly reflect that. I'd therefore like to go ahead and restore the words in question, because they do make the lead clearer on that point. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:17, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
Of course there has been "style consistency across articles on WP"! How could that be a bad thing? MOS assists that; and so do WP:TITLE, the many naming conventions, and other "regularising" instruments across wikispace. But MOS is already very clear: in some areas there are choices. Where that applies, stick to one option within an article, and don't switch to another option without good reason and consensual discussion. No more needs to be said; stressing a lack of consistency between articles only encourages a lack of consistency between thematically related articles, through misreading for "political" purposes. I have given a potent example of such politics: Mexican–American War.
NoeticaTea? 22:29, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
There has never been consensus to introduce style consistency across articles; on the contrary, there has always been opposition to it. I don't know what you mean by thematically related articles, or "political" purposes, and the example hasn't enlightened me, sorry. SlimVirgin (talk) 22:35, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
Sure there has been such a consensus! Style consistency across articles is what MOS is all about. But there has never been a requirement in MOS to implement a particular style option uniformly across articles, where MOS provides for such options. I for one am not proposing any such requirement. Let's be strictly accurate, otherwise we will be misread. It's bad enough when we do express ourselves with precision, apparently. ☺
As for Mexican–American War, it is an infamous example of a battleground. Disregard for reader-friendly consistency of style where MOS did not provide for such options; and it caused protracted conflict. I gave the example at least to show how hotly disputed the matter of conformity to MOS has been, generally. But more specifically, MOS was cited inaccurately: against any consideration of titles that in the relevant respect were precisely the same (based on the pattern "X–Y War", using an en dash). Cited, in fact, against the policy provision at WP:TITLE that I have quoted above (from WP:CRITERIA).
NoeticaTea? 23:48, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
I finally had time to click your link and it's just the article on the Mexican-American War. How exactly does this serve as evidence that having some sort of resolution in favor of cross-article consistency on closely related topics would prevent problems on Wikipedia? I'm not being sarcastic; I'd like to know.
As things stand, I support returning "but not necessarily across Wikipedia as a whole" to the MoS. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:25, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
The link for you to click is clearly marked as "archived disputes" (see above). I then wrote (see above): "Remember those disputes? Wade through all of that archive!" You contributed there, Darkfrog. Read how you made points that are almost identical to those you make now, and read how I referred you to policy at WP:TITLE, then too. Try again.
NoeticaTea? 03:44, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
I mean the link you posted a few days ago, the one that just leads to the war article. (Checks) And today's link just leads to the article too. Yes, there was a big fight about whether M-A War should be hyphenated/dashed the same way in every article, but I am asking you what you think. Wading through the archive would at best facilitate a guess at what your reasoning is. What I want to know is what part of which M-A war dispute you feel is a specific problem that would be solved if the MoS were to endorse P3.Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:38, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
Sorry Darkfrog: I have no time to limn yet again the stance that I have already made quite clear. Just note my response to your last sentence: I have linked you the general archived mess at Talk:Mexican–American War; and I have drawn attention to your own points there, and Enric Naval's. Let us ask: How much progress has been made? Who has worked for that progress, and who has worked against it? Finally (as I hope!), I stress once again: I am not proposing P3 or anything like it as an addition to WP:MOS.
NoeticaTea? 00:29, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
There seems to be agreement to restore "though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole." Enric Naval, Darkfrog, PBS and I are in favour; Noetica and Curb Chain are opposed; Mirokado wants consistency between closely related articles, but not necessarily across WP. I think the more people we ask, the greater the consensus will be against requiring cross-WP consistency, so I'll go ahead and restore those words. I think the lead could use some general tweaking too, but I'll address that separately. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:13, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
I would like to add that this is not a discussion about whether we should change the policy. The policy is that cross-article consistency is permitted but not required. The issue is whether the MoS should have the words "though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole" in it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:09, 31 August 2012 (UTC)


Break

The problem is that the second and third paragraphs contradict each other. The second says we have a house style; the third says we do not. Both have redirects (WP:CLARITY redirects to the second, and WP:Stability and WP:STYLEVAR to the third), so anyone reading those in isolation would be misled.

Second paragraph: "The MoS presents Wikipedia's house style, to help editors produce articles with consistent, clear and precise language, layout, and formatting. The goal is to make the encyclopedia easier and more intuitive to use. Consistency in language, style, and formatting promotes clarity and cohesion; this is especially important within an article. Writing should be clear and concise. Plain English works best: avoid ambiguity, jargon, and vague or unnecessarily complex wording."
Third paragraph: "An overriding principle is that style and formatting choices should be consistent within an article, though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole. Where more than one style is acceptable, editors should not change an article from one of those styles to another without a substantial reason. Revert-warring over optional styles is unacceptable. (These matters have been addressed in rulings of the Arbitration Committee: see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Jguk#Optional styles and Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Sortan#Preferred styles.) If discussion cannot determine which style to use in an article, defer to the style used by the first major contributor."

SlimVirgin (talk) 16:30, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I see the third paragraph as a clarification of the second. It does not contradict anything in the second. The second says, "Consistency is good." The third says, "By that we mean intra-article consistency." Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:09, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
The second paragraph says there is a house style, but the third paragraph says there isn't, so there's a contradiction right there. It matters less if the two paragraphs are read together, but the separate anchors mean they might not be. The question is: to what extent does Wikipedia have a house style, or to what extent does it allow contributors to choose a style so long as there is internal consistency? SlimVirgin (talk) 00:48, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Additional discussion

I just want to note that I agree that User:Noetica was correct in removing the discussion that User:SlimVirgin started by pulling the archive instead of linking it, but some comments had been added when she restarted the discussion:[9]Curb Chain (talk) 03:05, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Never mind, Curb. SlimVirgin acted completely in good faith. I only objected because the way she did it left things unclear. I think it would often be fine to restore something had very recently been archived, and to put a clear explanation at the top. I do think that one is generally then expected to join in the discussion that one has wanted restored. I don't see that happening.
☺ NoeticaTea? 20:03, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
I think Curb's point is that, when you removed the discussion from this page, you removed six new posts that had not been archived. So they disappeared. But they're now in the archive along with the others. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:29, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
O yes, of course. Well, that's what can happen when material is retrieved from the archives without clear signalling. I have checked, and it turns out that anyone who made a post in that discussion has joined the new discussion, and can see what has happened. If anyone had been left out, I would have notified them now. Turns out not to be needed.
NoeticaTea? 22:02, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Reversion of non-consensual edits concerning inter-article consistency

I have reverted (see diff) two edits by SlimVirgin. The change in question clearly has no consensus. Editing and discussion for this page are subject to ArbCom discretionary sanctions (see the note at the top of this talkpage); so a high standard of conduct and respect for due process applies. Please discuss more, and if necessary initiate a neutral RFC. If any RFC is not set up in neutral terms, according to the provisions of WP:RFC, I will call for its immediate closure and refer the matter to WP:AE. Please note especially: This is not intended as inimical to any good-faith development of the page; but experience has shown how these things can escalate, and how they can wear away people's time and patience. ♥
NoeticaTea? 00:18, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

When changing subtle things, it's a lot easier on the rest of us if you use "Show changes" a bit, and try to minimize the distracting diff variants. I had to compare sentence-by-sentence, just to figure out that the only thing you changed in that edit was a single sentence, and a number of linebreaks.
This is why plain-reverting is bloody annoying. (The same thing is happening elsewhere at the moment). If you have a partial dispute with an edit, then just revert the part you disagree with (or even better, offer an alternative/compromise edit), not the entire damned thing.
Thanks. -- Quiddity (talk) 00:48, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
The words in question were in the MoS for quite some time, and were removed without discussion. I have restored them because this is an important issue, and one that has caused quite a bit of grief on WP. If you want to remove them, please gain consensus here, or open an RfC to attract more eyes.
I didn't restore your other reverts, but I can't see the point of having six short paragraphs in the lead, so I'd be grateful if you would let them be condensed. SlimVirgin (talk) 00:43, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
Noetica, what was the point of this revert? SlimVirgin (talk) 00:51, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
As Noetica continues to object, I've opened an RfC below. Apologies if it ends up being largely repetitive, but it might attract fresh eyes and we can request a formal closure to avoid arguments. SlimVirgin (talk) 01:17, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
I reverted Noetica there in a moment of irritation, but I shouldn't have, so I'm going to revert myself and abide by whatever the RfC decides. SlimVirgin (talk)
  • Comment: It's obvious to anyone who thinks about it for a few seconds that this entire "intra- vs. inter-article consistency" thing is a false dichotomy. There is absolutely no conflict between the two ideas, except that which is purposefully manufactured by people who refuse to write in a way that is consistent between articles, just to satisfy their own personal stylistic preferences at everyone else's expense. The "versus" that is latent in this discussion is entirely artificial. It's what the British call a load of bollocks, and Americans refer to as total bullshit. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 23:38, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

RfC: Internal consistency versus consistency across articles

This RfC was about the sentence "An overriding principle is that style and formatting choices should be consistent within an article, though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole." In particular, whether the phrase "though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole" should be included or not. There were two reasons to remove the phrase: that it is superfluous and that Wikipedia should be striving to be consistent across all articles. These are two very different viewpoints that are arguing for the same change in the guidelines, but the net effect of the change would be that it would increase arguing over what was meant in the MOS. Those who wish to retain the phrase (or oppose removal) basically are arguing that consistency across Wikipedia articles is not, nor has ever been, required, and even if it is superfluous it should be reiterated in this sentence. The consensus of the discussion was to oppose the removal of the phrase. -Nathan Johnson (talk) 11:52 am, 4 October 2012, Thursday (9 days ago) (UTC−4)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Extended content

[Here I have reverted the irregular closure of part of the material that constitutes the RFC (simply by removing the template markers that added the heading "The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it."). That closure was executed by SlimVirgin, the RFC's proposer. Please wait for an admin to sort out this unholy mess, rather than adding even more irregularities to an RFC that was mismanaged from the start. ☺ NoeticaTea? 22:18, 8 October 2012 (UTC)]

The RfC was opened on 1 September. It asked whether the words "though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole" should be removed from the lead sentence: "An overriding principle is that style and formatting choices should be consistent within an article, though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole."

The RfC was closed on 4 October by an uninvolved editor, Nathan Johnson, following a request at AN/RFC. He concluded: "The consensus of the discussion was to oppose the removal of the phrase." Noetica reverted his closure twice, [10] [11] asking that it be closed by an admin. I am therefore going to ask an uninvolved admin to endorse or overturn the closure. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:21, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

RfC

This sentence had been in the MoS for some time: "An overriding principle is that style and formatting choices should be consistent within an article, though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole." The whole sentence was removed 12 months ago, [12] then restored, [13] then it was changed so that it read: "An overriding principle is that style and formatting choices should be consistent within an article." [14] [15]

Should the words "though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole" be removed from that sentence? SlimVirgin (talk) 01:00, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

[Correction by Noetica: The sentence in question had been absent from MOS for over 12 months, till Slim Virgin reinstated it a few days ago. It was then removed by an editor, and then restored in part by Noetica.]
Extended content

Replies

[no threaded discussion here, please]
  • Oppose removal. There has always been an understanding that internal consistency is required when it comes to style issues, but not consistency across articles. There are formatting issues that are applied across the board (the general layout, for example). But when it comes to language variations, punctuation, and a host of other issues, we allow the editors on the page to decide, sometimes governed by personal preference, sometimes by whether a particular English-language variant ought to be dominant. The words "not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole" signal that cross-article consistency is sometimes expected, but not always, and I feel it's important to retain that point. SlimVirgin (talk) 01:14, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
  • I am opposing the removal because style consistency across articles has always been discouraged since the "date delinking" edit wars years ago. It's clear and concise. The removal leaves room for other interpretations. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:12, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose removal. per SlimVirgin and Enric. (Maybe we can get "Description not prescription" added back to wherever it was, too, eventually...) Time is not especially relevant, the detail/context that the sentence contains, is. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:40, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose removal. I think it's important to include a phrase that underscores the point that we have options for styles. Otherwise MOS would require, say, American English and SI units and common date formats across all articles. The MOS is not a prescription to be applied slavishly to all articles. A short phrase serves as a useful reminder of that fact, and its removal, as Enric Naval pointed out, leaves room for other interpretations, contributing to wasted time in needless debates about inter-article consistency. ~Amatulić (talk) 04:00, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose removal. The sentiment expressed by the phrase in question is essential to preventing disputes over English spelling style, comma style, referencing style, etc. "The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from." <grin> We should emphasize that we are not here to make everybody toe the same line. If somebody's formatting can be traced to a practice that is accepted in a particular venue, then that formatting should be allowed. Binksternet (talk) 04:35, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose removal. It must be understood that an absolute consistency across articles is not possible with the diverse population we have and hope to have. This lack of rigid consistency must be explicitly permitted, along with the wish expressed that styles be referenced and adhered to when possible. But when the permissiveness disappears silently quietly without much notice to the common editor, the appearances are chilling.
Which brings up two issues on my own mind. Noetica, do you really think that 12 months is a long time, for pages which nominally are to be used to guide the entire 'pedia? You've been here since 2005, seven years. The lapse of one year before even active editors discover a misjudged edit is not unreasonable. It would seem from your strong surprise that a year could possibly be called 'recent' that you must be far too familiar with these environs to tell on that particular.
These pages are not welcoming, quite dense, often confounding, and I am not surprised that editors would not often make themselves available to review proposed changes. Saying that "see talk" is sufficient for changes to MOS would seem to me to be entirely insufficient for the average non-MOS-wonk editor.
Removing the explicit allowance for editors to not be required to conform to the tittle of MOS, through a change by the MOS-most editors, is troubling on multiple levels. Shenme (talk) 06:27, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Support the removal of text that was done twelve months ago. The stress on intra-article consistency is fine, of course. So is motherhood. But why labour to include what many editors have unfortunately misread as a licence for chaos? Groups of articles on similar themes benefit enormously from similar styling (where MOS allows for a choice). Why bend over backwards against such efforts? They are clearly in readers' interests. MOS was, till a few days ago, silent on such laudable efforts. What benefit is there in it making a statement that is bound to be misused by those who favour complete independence of styling, at each of 4,000,000 articles? No one is suggesting that a contrary statement be made; just that it is not the business of MOS inadvertently to counter worthwhile efforts to improve the readability of closely associated articles.
NoeticaTea? 08:51, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
  • [NOTE: As I explain below in "Threaded discussion", I am tied up with matters in real life. I have said all I need to say for this RFC, in the discussion earlier on this page: #Internal consistency v consistency across articles. The question facing us is important, and I advise people not to conflate consistency of style for Wikipedia in general (the very essence of MOS) and consistency of style where choices are allowed in MOS (and there are very few such choices, at least in WP:MOS itself). Misreadings we observe in this RFC illustrate the very problem that such carelessly added wording introduces: people do not read accurately, nor discriminate as we expect they will. ♥ NoeticaTea? 03:52, 7 September 2012 (UTC)]
  • Oppose removal by which I really mean "support re-insertion." Wikipedia is not like other encyclopedias. It requires on the unpaid service of editors from many disparate backgrounds and it has no chain of command. There's no one who can legitimately say, "Do it this way because I'm the boss and I've earned my authority." Inter- but not intra-article consistency strikes a balance between neatness and the diversity of opinion among our editors. If it is "bound to be misused," then show at least one case in which that has happened. Has an editor ever claimed "We are not allowed to make these articles match each other; the MoS says so"? Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:31, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose removal/retain - This would also seem to fall afoul of WP:ENGVAR, among other things... - jc37 20:04, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
  • I think the sentence should be re-inserted. It's good for readers of the MOS to see a reminder that it is meant to include only a minimal amount of standardization, and that there are many reasons why different articles will have different styles. Where some see chaos in numerous styles, I see a field of wildflowers. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:25, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment. In my opinion, style and formatting inconsistencies across articles within English Wikipedia should be viewed as unavoidable exceptions to a general ambition that Wikipedia should be as consistent as possible throughout. Inconsistency should not be tacitly encouraged or presented as part of a "principle". 86.160.221.242 (talk) 16:40, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Support re-removal per Noetica, and per the fact that the removal has been stable for a long time, and the fact that we do not need to repeat everything ever said in every guideline and policy on the system. It's already implicit in MoS's mandate as a guideline that it operates in juxtaposition and compromise with other forms of guidance here. Reiterating that a guideline can have exceptions, or that any particular guideline is not an ironclad policy, is not what we do here. Also, it really has been misinterpreted as a license for chaos. It was removed for a reason.

    Furthermore, there's an underlying assumption (one that is often advanced by the sort of editorial misprioritization addressed by WP:SSF, and WP:NOTHERE before it) that inter-article consistency is not desirable, and is immediately trumped by narrow, even personal preferences. Yet, obviously it is desirable to the extent that it can happen without raising intractable problems (like those addressed by WP:ENGVAR). If it were not desirable MOS would be very short, as the bulk of it and its subpages is style advice for dealing with English-language prose across all articles here. Material is not being broken out of MoS into small, topic-specific WikiProject "guidelines"; rather, the exact opposite is happening: Good advice from projects is making its way steadily into MoS so that it is applied consistently in articles on other topics.
    — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 08:24, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

  • Support re-removal When one says 'consistent within an article' and is mute on what happens outside, lack of consistency between articles is unambiguous as implied in the guideline. There is no ambiguity in its absence, and I find the deleted half superfluous and repetitive. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 08:49, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Support removal. The main purpose of the MoS , like other guidelines, is to achieve a level of consistency above the level of the individual article. Even in the case of the exceptions which prove the rule, like WP:ENGVAR we strive for consistency with things like WP:COMMONALITY. It is not required, but within the context of the Manual of Style we should not stress that it is unnecessary, thus giving the impression that it not desired. I think we achieve a reasonable balance by not mentioning it at all in this sentence.--Boson (talk) 09:04, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Remove to reduce chaos – "though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole" sounds like the opposite of what MOS is about, which is to encourage some consistency of style across WP. Dicklyon (talk) 05:02, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Support removal.—It's unnecessary to confuse editors on this point, when the whole of MoS concerns stylistic consistency on en.WP. The absence of this text in no way suggests that articles have to be consistent with each other where a choice is allowed (engvar, em vs en dashes as interruptors, etc). Tony (talk) 06:57, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose removal (of "though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole.") This is another case where discussion of wording changes gets confused with discussion of policy changes. "An overriding principle is that style and formatting choices should be consistent within an article" of itself implies that between articles consistency of such choices is not of "overriding" importance, so if we were only discussing wording, I don't see the need for "though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole." That there is no overriding requirement for consistency throughout Wikipedia as a whole is clear from many other places (ENGVAR, choice of citation styles, etc.). If on the other hand those who don't want to include "though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole" seek thereby to change policy (as some comments above imply), so that consistency between articles becomes an "overriding principle", then these words should certainly be present, otherwise the implication is that consistency overrides ENGVAR, etc. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:23, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Retain/oppose removal' - The key words being "not necessarily". On those formatting issues about which broad community-wide discussion arrives at a consensus, consistency can and should be enforced, but about those the community maintains a more laissez-faire attitude, editors should have the leeway to improve articles as they see fit, given the specific needs of the specific article, without having to answer to those who try to enforce a non-existing consensus. The very most important thing, which it is best that we put our energies to, is to give our readers good, accurate information, well presented, rather than that every article have every tiny formatting aspect be exactly the same. Such "fooliosh consistency" is, in Emerson's words "the hobgoblin of little minds", in Shaw's words "the enemy of enterprise", and in Wilde's words "the last refuge of the unimaginative." Surely our editors are just the opposite: enterprising, imaginative and open to the world. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:37, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose Though they certainly are superfluous these few words can serve as a reminder to people of how we do things here. It would be much easier to point a misguided editor to this phrase than to the absence of words to the contrary. There may not be a lot of benefit but the cost is nanofarthings. JIMp talk·cont 09:25, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Support removal. Of course the Manual of Style applies to the whole of Wikipedia. That's what it's for. Are we now to have local consensus for commas? Em-dash wars breaking out in Birds? Apostrophe wars in Composers? WP:BEANS Neotarf (talk) 06:49, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Support removal. The extra words seem to be encouraging inconsistency far too strongly. , indeed one responder says "consistency across articles has always been discouraged" which seems a good example of a rule which should always be ignored: should I look for ways of making every article I edit inconsistent with every other article? The wording chosen should not give anybody an excuse to be uncooperative, whether they wish to apply something too widely or ignore interrelationships between articles. Although readers must accept that Wikipedia's articles follow no single strict house style, they are not well served if, for example, individual articles covering the six books of a series have corresponding content distributed differently across sections, perhaps in a different order or with different names. The work of adding related information to several such articles could be doubled or trebled depending on how they were inconsistent and such barriers to editing cannot contribute to content improvement. Not even in a single article do we revert constructive additions merely because a wrong sort of dash has been used, so I do not see consistency within an appropriate scope, maintained tactfully, as stifling new content. Neither would any expectation of consistency remove the necessity for having consensus to maintain it: I would expect the ease of finding consensus to correspond to the closeness of the relationship in a self-limiting way. --Mirokado (talk) 14:00, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose removal. It is kind of silly for a project that uses four different flavours of English and can't decide what it thinks about the usage of diacritics to try and pretend that internal consistency is really all that important. When you get right down to it, Wikipedia is the informational equivalent of a quilt. It is a patchwork design that comes together into a single pattern despite the differences found on each tile. I see no reason to replace that with a unitarian attitude. Resolute 01:18, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Meh. Should talking about the other part; there is far too much different-as-hell but internally-consistent going on. Consistency across the project is needful, with any variations being on a level vastly larger than individual articles. And no, don't talk to me about WikiProjects taking any lead, here. Br'er Rabbit (talk) 04:32, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose removal and reinstate the words per Slim, Resolute and Peter Coxhead. It's how we do things, and policies and guidance describe how we do things. Hiding T 11:00, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose removal Editors should be allowed to edit, to create articles. No one wants to see WP become an homogeneous blob. Part of its charm is that the best articles do bear the stamp of their creator. The phrase should be retained. It's not tautological. It makes explicit an import aspect of WP's ethos. 87.112.91.134 (talk) 14:39, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose removal/Support retaining the bit that says that we don't need to be consistant across all of Wikipedia. --Jayron32 00:44, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Meh, seems to make little difference either way. I would prefer to argue over something juicier like diacritics or nested quotation marks ;) Kaldari (talk) 04:43, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Support Removal per the smart people above. 128.127.107.10 (talk) 05:26, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Support removal, per Special:Contributions/86.160.221.242: In my opinion, style and formatting inconsistencies across articles within English Wikipedia should be viewed as unavoidable exceptions to a general ambition that Wikipedia should be as consistent as possible throughout. Inconsistency should not be tacitly encouraged or presented as part of a "principle". -- Strongest point made in this discussion, bar none. We strive to present a consistent and consistently formatted encyclopedia to the public. A reminder to watch consistency first on the level of the individual article is perfectly fine, but the words "though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole" explicitly defy the purpose of having a Manual of Style in the first place. --87.79.226.106 (talk) 00:32, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Support removal. Overall consistency in formatting and style across the entire English Wikipedia is an important goal also. Certainly exceptions can exist, but that language implies that broader consistency is of little importance. Rreagan007 (talk) 17:41, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose removal/support replacing that phrase, unless I'm the person who gets to decide what that applies-to-all-articles style is going to be. We need more live and let live where style is concerned, and less time wasted in discussions about whose style of spelling, citing, image formatting, etc. is the one true way. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:27, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose removal (support re-insertion as case may be) per ENGVAR, CITEVAR, Date delinking case etc., and to douse the idiotic edit warring by those seeking to enforce style consistency over content judgment. That pigheaded editing is a far bigger problem for the project than minor style differences here or there. Life is inconsistent, the world is inconsistent, Wikipedia reflects that. Accept it and go do something useful. 67.117.130.72 (talk) 13:20, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

Some questions
  • Question - How does this apply to an issue like "The" v. "the Beatles"? Could/should we have our article about the Beatles use "The" while those about John, Paul, George and Ringo use "the"? ~ GabeMc (talk|contribs) 03:56, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
In my opinion, no. Wikipedia should have a global view on that (unless the different camps become so entrenched and intractable that people just give up trying). 86.128.4.124 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 11:36, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
And if that happens, go with MoS's default position, which is inter- as well as intra-article consistency. Those who would make weird exceptions have the burden on them to demonstrate a need for it. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 23:19, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
The MoS does not have a default position for inter-article consistency. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:12, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
Come on guys, don't descend into slipshod language again and again. See my admonishments to distinguish what are quite distinct issues, above. Sheesh! If we at this talkpage don't read with care, how do we expect readers of MOS to get the message? That is the core problem in this discussion.
SMcCandlish refers to "MoS's default position, which is inter- as well as intra-article consistency". Of course. That's the purpose of a manual of style!
If anyone (Enric Naval? Darkfrog?) thinks Wikipedia should not have a genuine, effective MOS, let them go to the village pump and argue their case. Or mount a self-contained RFC. Here, however, the business is to develop a manual of style that functions as one. It now qualifies as a major manual of style in its own right, and there is nothing remotely approaching it on the web – or for the web – in quality and coverage. You doubt that? Show us a better one! If anyone thinks MOS includes whims or foibles, let them argue here for particular improvements. That's the core purpose here.
So finally, for now: Do not spread confusion. Do not conflate these two issues:
  1. Consistency of style generally
    (the purpose of MOS)
  2. Consistent application of styles where MOS provides for a choice
    (a much smaller concern, the details of which are the present topic; it can only apply to groups of related articles, otherwise MOS would not provide for choices at all)
It is grossly irresponsible to hijack an RFC concerned with 2 to further one's agenda with 1.
♫♪
NoeticaTea? 23:51, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
Take your own advice, Noetica. No one said that Wikipedia should not have an effective MoS. The MoS does (or used to and should again) state that intra-article consistency is its purpose. It does not state that inter-article consistency is. One can imagine a default position, but no true one is given. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:53, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
Obdurate obfuscation. I have no time for this, as I have said. You write: "It does not state that inter-article consistency is [its purpose]." What? Inter-article consistency is the blindingly obvious plain supposition behind every manual of style. You wonder why I go on at length, repeating what I have already plainly stated in a few words? Think afresh; actually read what I write, and you might get it. You utterly, repeatedly, and apparently wilfully fail to see the crucial distinction that I have marked out several times already. Do better.
♥
NoeticaTea? 03:27, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
In other words, you looked at what the MoS said, and you drew your own inference about what it meant. Don't complain when other people do the same thing. I might read Hamlet and think that it's "blindingly obvious" that Hamlet's insane, but someone else might think that he's faking. I'm not "willfully failing" to listen to you. I just don't agree with you.
What we know for certain is that the MoS does explicitly state that intra-article consistency is a goal and does not explicitly state that inter-article consistency is. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:41, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
A recklessly inept response, and unworthy. To mimic your analogy, missing the fact that MOS is about general consistency between all articles would be like reading Hamlet and missing the fact that it is a play. Hamlet is very evidently a play, even though there is no declaration like "this is a play, and is to be acted by actors in front of an audience". Its proper title: The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. You have to know: in those days especially, a tragedy is a play. It has a list of dramatis personae, it is divided into acts and scenes, it is set up in standard dialogue format, and has stage directions. Now, the proper title for MOS: Wikipedia:Manual of Style. Kind of gives the game away, doesn't it? And what is a manual of style, that applies to 6,820,533 articles? It is necessarily a guide to elements of consistency, for and across all those articles. You continue to confuse the issue. Yes, MOS provides for some variation. But yes, MOS rightly stresses especially consistency within any given article. What is here under dispute, though you steadily refuse to acknowledge it, is the extent to which those few variable elements might vary across related articles. The issue could not rationally be anything else. You just don't read that; it seems to suit your agenda (and Enric Naval's, and sockpuppeting campaigner PMAnderson's) to insist instead on making MOS ineffectual. You would prefer that it have less influence, and that it not work toward general uniformity of style, across four million articles. But that is not what this RFC is about. Nor is it what the contested wording is about. Stop pretending that it is. Yet again: people will misread the wording that SlimVirgin inserted in MOS, which she now wants restored. You misread that wording, and you are a regular here. So it is even more likely that those less familiar with MOS will misread it. Where has this been a problem, you ask? I have answered: the best example I know is the life-wasting wrangling over Mexican–American War, in which you, Enric Naval, and PMAnderson pushed the same anti-MOS agenda, with the same perverse appeal to Slim's ill-advised and misleading words in MOS. Get it.
☺
NoeticaTea? 01:08, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
What this means, Noetica, is that you and I looked at the same document and came to different conclusions about it. That does not make me unworthy in any way or designate you as fit to give anyone orders. You have an agenda yourself: You don't want people to be allowed to do things in ways that you don't like, regardless of whether they can be proven to be correct or incorrect English.
Just because I don't think that pushing inter-article consistency or whims like WP:LQ is a good idea doesn't mean I don't want the MoS to be followed. Removing stupid and arbitrary rules from the MoS makes people less likely to disregard the sensible ones.
This conversation is in response to SmC's assertion that inter-article consistency is the MoS's default setting. I responded "The MoS does not have a default setting for inter-article consistency." The RfC is about whether the MoS should have a statement stating that its purpose is interra-article consistency, so that comment is relevant.
So, because I disagree with you, I must have misread the wording? Actually, my understanding is that you think that the fact that the MoS exists is proof that it must exist for the purpose of inter-article consistency, and that is what I don't accept.
Your comments seem to have a recurring theme of "The fact that you disagree with me is proof that you don't understand the issue." That's not a very logical argument. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:59, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
Palpable misrepresentations, Darkfrog.
  • I did not say you were unworthy. I said: "A recklessly inept response, and unworthy." It was unworthy of you, as a committed contributor at this talkpage.
  • You have no ground for the claim that I "don't want people to be allowed to do things in ways that [I] don't like". That is an irresponsible accusation. I am not forcing anyone to do anything; nor is MOS. MOS includes many provisions that I think are absurd; but I choose to respect MOS, and I hope other editors will do the same (as WP:POLICY says they should).
  • What you prejudicially characterise as "pushing inter-article consistency" is the very purpose of MOS. Again and again you fail to make the elementary distinction that I have again and again invited you to grasp.
  • WP:LQ is not "a whim". If it were, it could easily be exposed as one; and it could be removed. Your failure to achieve that removal does not prove that it is a whim. Quite the contrary.
  • You write: "The RfC is about whether the MoS should have a statement stating that its purpose is inter-article consistency, ...". Inaccurate to the point of being straight-out false.
  • You write: "Removing stupid and arbitrary rules from the MoS makes people less likely to disregard the sensible ones." So what? I want to remove those also! We all want to. Keep working on it, by all means. But don't weaken the standing of MOS in the meantime.
  • Your "understanding" shows that you do indeed miss the points that I have made. Because of your missing them, I repeat them; and still you miss them. If you have an alternative account of what a manual of style is, please share it. I have spelt out my account (which is the almost universal account, note). Let's see yours.
  • You wrongly apprehend the recurring theme of my posts. It is not your disagreeing with me that I find unacceptable; it is that you do not address the evidence and the arguments that I present.
  • It is a cheap and transparent tactic to ignore the arguments as actually given, present a straw man in their place, and then finish with the judgement "That's not a very logical argument."
NoeticaTea? 05:47, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
That "inter" was a typo for "intra." I meant to say "This is about whether the MoS should state that intra-article consistency is its purpose."
So if I said "These posts are full of drama queen histrionics," you wouldn't think that I was calling you a drama queen? You wouldn't be insulted or consider it a personal attack? Because I think you would.
The difference seems to be that you think that just because the MoS says something doesn't mean people have to do it, so it doesn't matter if it contains unnecessary rules (and those rules might as well match your own preferences). However, people can be censured and punished for disobeying the MoS, so we must be more careful.
WP:LQ is a whim in that people like it but it offers Wikipedia no real benefit. It is not my failure to have it removed that proves that it's a whim. It's the fact that it contradicts established sources and that no one has been able to point to even one incident of American English punctuation causing any problems that proves this. It takes more than logic and the sources to get a popular problem out of the MoS. It would be great if it didn't work that way, but it does.
There is a difference between most manuals of style and the Wikipedia manual of style. That difference is that the WP:MoS is meant for Wikipedia, which is 1. crowdsourced and 2. dependent on the donated service of editors from around the world. The difference in skill, training and range of expertise is immense. Because they are not being compensated, we shouldn't expect them to take orders the same way we could expect paid employees to and we shouldn't expect every article to be exactly the same the way we could expect articles in Britannica to be. If we want to keep our contributors, we need to make compromises, and accepting that consistency has its limits is one of them.
My idea of a strong MoS is one that is obeyed. Not requiring inter-article consistency or a serial comma or any given point does not make people less likely to do what the MoS does tell them to do. Think of two teachers in a grammar school: One of them has a million rules about how the kids' legs should be positioned when they sit and exactly how far apart their coats should be on the rack. The other teacher has fewer rules but they're more about safety and schoolwork. Which one are the students less likely to disregard as a control freak or jerk? Which one is likely to have students who think that rules in general are made to be broken?
Noetica, you haven't presented any evidence in this thread ("Questions"). You've only repeated your opinions. You sound like you think I should take your word as proof. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:53, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
Concur with anon. Where something is clearly incorrect English and can be shown through sources to be incorrect English, like capitalizing "the" mid-sentence, then the MoS should not allow people to use it. This is a separate issue, dealing with optional matters, like whether or not to use the serial comma. As for "The Beatles," its my understanding that their fans kept shouting until the opposition was too tired to object any more. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:05, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Break 1
  • An RFC should not be advertised misleadingly to the community. I have therefore added a factual correction that will appear on the relevant RFC listings. If Slim Virgin would like to amend her text to incorporate that correction, fine. Otherwise, please let it stand. ♥ NoeticaTea? 11:55, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
If you want to write underneath my posts to correct or add an interpretation, that's fine of course, but please don't post inside them (this is the second time it has happened). In any event, none of these details – when it was restored, who partially restored it – matter. The question is simply whether we (now) want these words or not. SlimVirgin (talk) 17:15, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
Slim, I am the last person to want irregular procedure at this talkpage. But you posted misleadingly so that the RFC is not advertised honestly to the community; and your rewording is still misleading. An RFC is, as I clearly reminded people here recently, required to be presented neutrally (see WP:RFC). Please now reword accurately. I'm sure you will understand: if you do not fix the advertised portion of your text, my proper but reluctant next move might be to seek a remedy from ArbCom. NoeticaTea? 23:09, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
I assume you are asking SlimVirgin to alter the text at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia policies and guidelines, presumably to include the text you added above in the "Correction from Noetica" section? (Your request is unclear, and bringing up arbcom is .... [insert eyeroll insinuating-word here].)
I suggest a simple addition, there and above (SlimVirgin only, please): just add the list of relevant diffs, and let people come to their own conclusions based on the evidence.
[16], [17], [18], [19]
It's not complicated, don't make it more so. -- Quiddity (talk) 02:52, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the diffs, Quiddity. I've added them. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:27, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
Indeed: it may not be complicated at all, Quiddity. Ask SlimVirgin who inserted the contested words in the first place, and with what consensus, and with what signalling in an edit summary. That might be relevant here, don't we all think?
When the extra words were removed, a year ago, there was reference to an ongoing discussion on the talkpage, where everything was out in the open. The edit summary (see Quiddity's links just above here): "Rationalise unruly bunch of mini-sections ('principles'). Reduce negative angle. Rm repetition and redundancy. See talk page." Now, let SlimVirgin show how the original insertion of the text she favours was managed. And by whom. I'm all for transparency. ☺!
As for referrals to ArbCom, of course I mean through WP:AE (ArbCom enforcement). My purpose is not to impugn SlimVirgin's motives or good faith; but recent cases have left this page under ArbCom discretionary sanctions, and as a regular here I am very concerned to avoid deficiencies in process that have wasted months of editors' time, and reserves of goodwill. We have to be especially careful. False advertising at an RFC notification, editing unilaterally without establishing consensus, chaotic discussion – none of that helps. Let's work collegially to maintain an excellent manual of style for Wikipedia.
NoeticaTea? 08:42, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
Mentioning AE has a chilling effect, and comes across (in this low-stress situation) as tactical. I'm not going to belabor the point, because it's plausibly deniable, and hence not worth debating. But everyone reading is aware, and most are rolling eyes.
Don't just insinuate, show the fracking evidence. Why are you asking others to do the legwork? ("Ask SlimVirgin who ...") Here's some relevant diffs, that led from its initial to final form: [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29] (And yes, SlimVirgin added it). It's not hard; Open the history, search for "consistency". With the time spent on crafting your polite wikilawyeresque statement, you could have been researching that, or doing something else useful. Grumblegrumble. [Addendum: Having trawled years of the history, I've seen how much work you do, and I do appreciate that. I'm just trying to point out that some of your sentences here are coming across quite badly.] -- Quiddity (talk) 21:31, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
Posted with difficulty, away from my usual place, from an iPad, immersed in real-world concerns involving the care of an 89-year-old woman 18,000 km from where I am: References to WP:AE may be "chilling", but the mechanism is there for a reason, and MOS has a role and a history that mean we must exercise special care. It is not my fault if people edit it disrupively, or discuss without observing the protocols, or without revealing their involvements. If my objections when people do that are seen as unpleasant, consider dispassionately what chaos we must guard against repeating.
Look above on the page, Quiddity, and see how much effort I have already put into this discussion. Thank you for coming in now and doing some more of the necessary work, and for revealing what SlimVirgin really ought to hve made plain from the start. I genuinely have no time to do any more on this for a while. My opinions, and my rather closely articulated reasons for them, are all laid out clearly above this RFC.
Best wishes to all!
NoeticaTea? 22:19, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
I don't want to take part in a meta discussion, but I'd like to add that I didn't know before starting this discussion who had first added that sentence and who had first removed it, because there was a lot of history to look through and it didn't really matter. All I knew was that it had been there for a while, and had been removed relatively recently, so that's what I wrote. I don't like the implication that I knew I was the original author and for some reason wanted to hide that (why would I?). I also wonder what the point is of not saying directly: "Slim, did you realize you first added that sentence a few years ago?".
Anyway, enough said. I hope we can now focus on the substance. SlimVirgin (talk) 22:37, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I am not sure if Noetica is still amazed, (21:00, 25 August 2012). But there is a possibility of arguing that while a consistent style may not be desirable across all articles, a consistent style in groups of articles may be desirable. This argument has been advanced in the past for the articles Orange (colour) and Grey because they are both articles about colour. It has also been advanced for the articles in featured topics.

My problem with arguing for consistence in "groups" of articles is what is obvious a group to one person is not necessarily obviously a group to another (and what to do with articles that are obviously in two groups with differing styles). I suspect that while the argument about obvious groups is superficially attractive, due to the problems lack of clarity in defining a group, it will eventual lead inexorably towards harmonisation of style over large parts of Wikipedia. -- PBS (talk) 08:52, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

And then you have overlapping. There are many articles that belong to more that one group. What will happen when those groups have conflicting styles? --Enric Naval (talk) 16:12, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
Break 2
[Note: Some of the threaded responses in this section were moved out of the Replies section above, and the initial posts copied to preserve context. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:26, 17 September 2012 (UTC)]

*Oppose removal. per SlimVirgin and Enric. (Maybe we can get "Description not prescription" added back to wherever it was, too, eventually...) Time is not especially relevant, the detail/context that the sentence contains, is. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:40, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Not taking sides in the RfC (haven't thought it through yet); but I want to point out now that all manuals of style are both prescriptive and descriptive. Tony (talk) 06:21, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
I don't remember exactly where it was, but I think it was originally in WP:NOT or WP:PG or similar (not a MOS page). Pointers appreciated though. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:27, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

[Noetica's vote, quoted from above:] Support the removal of text that was done twelve months ago. The stress on intra-article consistency is fine, of course. So is motherhood. But why labour to include what many editors have unfortunately misread as a licence for chaos? Groups of articles on similar themes benefit enormously from similar styling (where MOS allows for a choice). Why bend over backwards against such efforts? They are clearly in readers' interests. MOS was, till a few days ago, silent on such laudable efforts. What benefit is there in it making a statement that is bound to be misused by those who favour complete independence of styling, at each of 4,000,000 articles? No one is suggesting that a contrary statement be made; just that it is not the business of MOS inadvertently to counter worthwhile efforts to improve the readability of closely associated articles.

NoeticaTea? 08:51, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
[NOTE: As I explain below in "Threaded discussion", I am tied up with matters in real life. I have said all I need to say for this RFC, in the discussion earlier on this page: #Internal consistency v consistency across articles. The question facing us is important, and I advise people not to conflate consistency of style for Wikipedia in general (the very essence of MOS) and consistency of style where choices are allowed in MOS (and there are very few such choices, at least in WP:MOS itself). Misreadings we observe in this RFC illustrate the very problem that such carefleesly added wording introduces: people do not read accurately, nor discriminate as we expect they will. ♥ NoeticaTea? 03:52, 7 September 2012 (UTC)]
By "what many editors have misread as a license for chaos," what do you mean? What happened, specifically, and when? Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:55, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

*Oppose removal by which I really mean "support re-insertion." Wikipedia is not like other encyclopedias. It requires on the unpaid service of editors from many disparate backgrounds and it has no chain of command. There's no one who can legitimately say, "Do it this way because I'm the boss and I've earned my authority." Inter- but not intra-article consistency strikes a balance between neatness and the diversity of opinion among our editors. If it is "bound to be misused," then show at least one case in which that has happened. Has an editor ever claimed "We are not allowed to make these articles match each other; the MoS says so"? Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:31, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I've already addressed this fallacious "we're volunteers so we should be able to do whatever we want for personal reasons, and consistency can go screw itself" meme at WP:SSF. Lack of payment has nothing to do with anything; there's no logical connection. It's like saying "I have blonde hair, so I should be allowed to eat small children", or "my dog is old, so I shouldn't have to pay the water bill". — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 22:36, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
I'm not saying that volunteers get to do whatever they want, and you know that perfectly well, but anyone who's worked in a volunteer organization can tell you that it's not the same type of dynamic as a workplace. On Wikipedia, no one volunteer outranks another. "Do X because I'm your boss" holds no weight here. "Do X because the majority of sources say that X is right and Y is wrong" does. People don't pull rank; sources do. When the sources cannot show that one way is better than another, no one person or small group of people should get to order the others around. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:18, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

[SMcCandlish's vote, quoted from above:] *Support re-removal per Noetica, and per the fact that the removal has been stable for a long time, and the fact that we do not need to repeat everything ever said in every guideline and policy on the system. It's already implicit in MoS's mandate as a guideline that it operates in juxtaposition and compromise with other forms of guidance here. Reiterating that a guideline can have exceptions, or that any particular guideline is not an ironclad policy, is not what we do here. Also, it really has been misinterpreted as a license for chaos. It was removed for a reason.

Furthermore, there's an underlying assumption (one that is often advanced by the sort of editorial misprioritization addressed by WP:SSF, and WP:NOTHERE before it) that inter-article consistency is not desirable, and is immediately trumped by narrow, even personal preferences. Yet, obviously it is desirable to the extent that it can happen without raising intractable problems (like those addressed by WP:ENGVAR). If it were not desirable MOS would be very short, as the bulk of it and its subpages is style advice for dealing with English-language prose across all articles here. Material is not being broken out of MoS into small, topic-specific WikiProject "guidelines"; rather, the exact opposite is happening: Good advice from projects is making its way steadily into MoS so that it is applied consistently in articles on other topics.
— SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 08:24, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

  • You said "It was removed for a reason.", but what? The only clues I can find are the original edit summary, and the archived thread Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 124#Extraneous clutter at the top - neither of which discuss the sentence/section in question at all. Is there anything else to look at, that makes you (and Noetica) consider it a license for chaos? (I'm assuming this is related to some sub-battle about date or titles or dashes or engvar or etc, but I'm not familiar with what/when/where/who :/ If I/we have more information, we can give better input. It is an RFC, after all; lots of non-regulars who need context...). Here's the talkpage history from 4/5 Aug 2011, in case that helps. -- Quiddity (talk) 20:55, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
I second Quiddity's request. You are the second person to say that this rule has been "misinterpreted as a license for chaos." What happened, specifically, and when? Was it only once or many times? We've seen some evidence that this text prevents problems, but if we can prove that this text causes more problems than it prevents, then it should stay out. Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:43, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
Please do not fixate on the idea that only a specific, major event is important; there was no Great Wiki Disaster of 2011. What there has been in response to this "rule" and various other kowtowing to intractable special interests who refuse to write consistent, encyclopedic prose for a general audience, is such editors taking license to do the exact opposite, and write articles on "their" topic as if intended for and published by professionals in their field instead of, well, everyone else in the entire world, which is what Wikipedia is actually here for, not regurgitating precious nitpicks from academia. It leads to wikiprojects acting as if they are sovereign states that own entire ranges of topics, and has led to enormous amounts of entrenched editwarring over the last 8+ years, threats of editorial boycotts, wikidiva resignations by editors, and other childish nonsense of massive proportions, all because some people are not here to write an encyclopedia but rather to spread their sub-sub-sub-field's particular stylistic peccadilloes and force everyone else to use them. Enough of that idiocy. It's been nothing but destructive. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 22:36, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Actually, problems attributable to this phrase would be more relevant to the MoS if they happened more than once. If it was a lot of little incidents rather than one big incident, then point to a good example or two. However, it's not immediately obvious what "not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole" has to do with the issue of writing for a general vs. a specialized audience.
Encyclopedic tone seems to be a separate issue from intra- vs. inter-article consistency, and it is covered elsewhere in the MoS. All of Wikipedia should be written for a general audience. Can you show or tell us how the phrase "but not necessarily across Wikipedia as a whole" has caused these problems? Can you point to one or more talk page discussions in which someone cited that phrase as a reason to write articles in a Wikiproject in an inappropriate manner? Did it happen in WP:BIRDS? Those guys are pretty big on writing articles for a specialized audience. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:26, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

*Retain/oppose removal' - The key words being "not necessarily". On those formatting issues about which broad community-wide discussion arrives at a consensus, consistency can and should be enforced, but about those the community maintains a more laissez-faire attitude, editors should have the leeway to improve articles as they see fit, given the specific needs of the specific article, without having to answer to those who try to enforce a non-existing consensus. The very most important thing, which it is best that we put our energies to, is to give our readers good, accurate information, well presented, rather than that every article have every tiny formatting aspect be exactly the same. Such "fooliosh consistency" is, in Emerson's words "the hobgoblin of little minds", in Shaw's words "the enemy of enterprise", and in Wilde's words "the last refuge of the unimaginative." Surely our editors are just the opposite: enterprising, imaginative and open to the world. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:37, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Misquotation, and skewed quotation out of context that misconstrues the intent of the original, is the hobgoblin of people whose arguments are too weak to stand on their own. Emerson actually said "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers...", which is very, very different, and his message was about radical philosophy and the advancement of novel ideas, which Wikipedia absolutely does not do. Just one example. By way of contrast, see the old aphorism "Consistency, thou art a jewel." Its origin is lost, but uses the virtue-as-jewel metaphor of the Elizabethan era, so it's at least as old as Shakespeare (cursorily searching, I've found it in print in the 1800s, but Bartlett suggests it's much older).

What you're missing is that Emerson, Shaw and Wilde were all writing about the negative effects of conformity on new, creative output such as literature, fashion and other forms of artistic expression, as well as the propounding of new theories. That is not what Wikipedia is. We are not permitted to engage in original research or even novel synthesis. And WP is not creative writing. It is necessarily dry, strictly informative prose that serves a purpose. It is formal, technical communication, not art. It serves this function best when it does not confuse the readership or make them mentally work hard to figure out what we are trying to convey. Emerson is worth quoting in more detail here: "To be great is to be misunderstood." Emerson argues for being confusing and self-contradictory! That's fine if you are a philosopher refining your outlook over time. It's a disaster in an encyclopedia. Inconsistency between articles here, for no reason other than to suit the in-house preferences of (mostly) academics, government people and fandom obsessives (the three most common sources of WP:SSF problems around here), is directly inimical to Wikipedia's actual goals, which are in service to readers, not editors. Consistency between articles, where it does not create novel problems like conflict between English dialects, is a sensible and necessary consistency in our context, not a foolish one. More recently, Tim Robbins (again writing of creative not technical/formal educational output) said "only logicians and cretins are consistent", and that's important: Consistency in art is certainly cretinous and yawn-inducing. But encyclopedia writing is by definition the work of logicians.

In closing, see the other quotations at http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Consistency, and notice that all of them that are in opposition to consistency are about either a) art and other creative output, or b) are about individuals changing their mind (i.e., a completely different meaning of the world "consistency" that isn't relevant to this discussion at all, and Cicero even suggests it's a misuse of the concept). I dare you to find a single exception. Even Larry Wall's quip that "the essence of sanity is to be inconsistently inconsistent" is directly applicable here, as it suggests that exceptions to consistency in human relation to reality (which is what WP is a tool for) should be rare; an insistent lack of consistency in such a context – what he calls "consistent inconsistency" – is, he suggests, a working definition of insane.
— SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 23:19, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

*Support removal. The extra words seem to be encouraging inconsistency far too strongly. , indeed one responder says "consistency across articles has always been discouraged" which seems a good example of a rule which should always be ignored: should I look for ways of making every article I edit inconsistent with every other article? The wording chosen should not give anybody an excuse to be uncooperative, whether they wish to apply something too widely or ignore interrelationships between articles. Although readers must accept that Wikipedia's articles follow no single strict house style, they are not well served if, for example, individual articles covering the six books of a series have corresponding content distributed differently across sections, perhaps in a different order or with different names. The work of adding related information to several such articles could be doubled or trebled depending on how they were inconsistent and such barriers to editing cannot contribute to content improvement. Not even in a single article do we revert constructive additions merely because a wrong sort of dash has been used, so I do not see consistency within an appropriate scope, maintained tactfully, as stifling new content. Neither would any expectation of consistency remove the necessity for having consensus to maintain it: I would expect the ease of finding consensus to correspond to the closeness of the relationship in a self-limiting way. --Mirokado (talk) 14:00, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

  • Hum, my bad. A better wording: "enforcing consistency across articles has always been discouraged". As in "changing articles from one MOS-approved to another MOS-approved style, just because you would like all articles in an arbitrary group to have the same style." People won't complain if you are actually working in a group of articles and you need to do changes in order to work better, and you only change articles that you are working in, or at most the odd article that is closely related. Now, if one was to land in a group of articles for the first time, then change the style to one's personal preference, then edit war when people complain that specific articles have a different style for a reason, etc, ..... --Enric Naval (talk) 18:49, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
    Thanks, Enric. Striking some of my response. I do agree with what you say just above, but not every editor is as sensible as we are and I'm still concerned that the proposed wording will encourage uncooperative behaviour, so I will stick with supporting removal. --Mirokado (talk) 21:15, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
    Ideally nothing would depend on such a fine balance of words, but experience of Wikipedia editing suggests to me that either wording will be used by those who cherry-pick the MOS to support a prior position. "Sensible" editors already understand that intra-article consistency is a priority, and that inter-article consistency is highly desirable, and that both kinds of consistency are subject to consensus, not ownership. Unfortunately many editors are not "sensible". I guess that preference here may depend on which kind of uncooperative behaviour you've mostly encountered. I'm concerned that removing the wording will encourage uncooperative behaviour, namely editors trying to change styles which have consensus in one area of Wikipedia to those which have consensus in another, because this is the kind of edit-warring I've mostly encountered. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:31, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
Look at that post. When I keep asking about evidence, this is what I mean. What kinds of edit wars have you seen, what fights on talk pages, what poorly worded articles, what bad reader experiences have you seen and how do you think changing/keeping this wording would fix it? Peter, can you drop us a link to any of these edit wars? Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:47, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Well since the proposed addition has been absent for a year or so I can't point to any recent problems it has caused. I can however point to responsible and constructive activities that this wording appears to target and wonder why anyone would expend so much effort to try to prevent them:

  • the List of horror films extends over 70 other pages. My attention was drawn to these lists by an obviously incorrect entry while I was checking links from a stub I had created (Amy B. Harris) for general quality issues (which does not mean that I expected all those links to be consistent). These lists were in an appalling state with lots of redlinks and lots of incorrect entries. I noticed that because I naturally checked the other lists as well as the original one, something which would be pointless if consistency between related articles is to be discouraged. Although the lists generally had the same number of columns and the same column headings, in detail there were random differences between them as well as formatting inconsistencies within some articles. The only practicable way to fix these problems was to apply a uniform structure to all the articles and then check progressively for problems and correct them. The more subtle the problems, the more the growing consistency helped to reveal them. The end result is that (with content improvements mainly due to contributions from other editors) the lists are much more correct and better sourced. Citations needed on more than one list can be copied and pasted without alteration as can the occasional entry allocated to the wrong year. The fatuous entries from drive-by editors have almost disappeared. All the changes were discussed on talk pages, often with an announcement and progress report accompanying each set of changes.
    If the MOS allows an editor to insist that some of these lists can have a different table structure, or be a bulleted list instead of tables, or have a different citation format, or whatever, because "consistency between articles is not necessarily required", then I presume I would either have to let some articles rot, ignore the problems completely or start an RFC. I certainly would not do the work twice over to accommodate what I would regard as obstruction.
  • cooperation on the works of Anne McCaffrey is relatively easy because, generally, the articles on her books have a common format. We can refine changes to one article including discussions on the talk page knowing that the corresponding updates can be made with reasonable effort and reliably to the other articles. There have been disagreements which have been resolved on talk pages. New ideas are not stifled, very much the reverse, we are currently discussing a new set of improvements. As far as I know, nobody has been made to feel unable to make changes to the pages. I don't think anybody is saying "therefore every article about a book by a particular author must have the same format", simply that the MOS should not set out to prevent such cooperation.
  • it seems in practice unlikely that editors will often challenge these sorts of scenario, but that indicates that this proposed addition is in fact pointless. If anybody were to make use of it, the result would be more discussion not less, resulting in RFCs if necessary.
  • in cases like date linking which has been mentioned, nobody is going to prevent such an activity by saying "articles do not have to be consistent", that is far to vague to counter someone's conviction that the world can only be saved by linking (or delinking) every date. The lines of defence are already quite adequate, with a requirement for consensus in advance for extensive systematic changes, blocks for editors who do not accept that (we can all think of cases where that has happened) and specific criteria determining when a particular disposition is appropriate. Nobody prepared to be blocked rather than achieve consensus is going to take the slightest notice of this text even if it is adopted. --Mirokado (talk) 23:04, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
To summarize, Mirokado seems to be saying the following 1. Inter-article consistency can make some improvements easier to make. 2. Mirokado describes one set of articles that happens to be written consistently and is working out well. To these two points, I respond that just because inter-article consistency is not required doesn't mean it's not permitted. Consistency alone isn't reason enough to change format, but my opinion is that effecting repairs is. 3. Mirokado thinks that the wording is extra/unnecessary. 4. Mirokado provides an argument against the date delinking example, which was previously offered as evidence by Enric N. Mirokado has not listed any edit wars or other nonhypothetical events attributable to the inclusion of the phrase "not necessarily across Wikipedia as a whole" in the MoS. Let me know if I've misinterpreted any of that. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:34, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
That is a pretty fair summary. It seems clear from your response that your concerns are not intended to impact the sorts of activity I have mentioned. As far as "consistency alone" is concerned, there will pretty well always be other benefits. I have already given examples from the editor's perspective. Readers benefit if they can easily understand where to find information in article Y if they have just been looking at the corresponding information in article X. Readers' expectations will be stronger the more closely they perceive the articles to be related.
Responding to "just because inter-article consistency is not required doesn't mean it's not permitted": if the MOS says anything at all about this it should acknowledge, as well, that although not required across the whole project substantial consistency is essential among many sets of articles in order to provide a satisfactory user experience and highly desirable, again among relevant articles, to support effective collaboration between editors. If it does not then it is encouraging a substandard user experience and article ownership in various forms, both of which are totally unacceptable. --Mirokado (talk) 20:49, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
Hi Mirokado, no one is saying consistency across articles, or groups of articles, must be opposed. The point is simply that just because an editor punctuates in a certain way in Holocaust in Poland doesn't mean editors must punctuate the same way in Holocaust in Romania. The sentence at issue is: "An overriding principle is that style and formatting choices should be consistent within an article, though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole." The word "necessarily" is important here. It signals that consistency across articles may sometimes, or regularly, be appropriate, but not invariably, and that some style issues are left to the editors on the page to decide. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:27, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
I believe that the MoS should not state that any sort of cross-article consistency is desirable because that statement will be taken as law. 1. We should give our editors freedom where correct English allows. 2. Some articles may logically belong to more than one group. Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:13, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
Some things are the same across pages (e.g. the general appearance), and there have been style practices that were so odd that I was glad to see cross-article consistency applied (e.g. overlinking). But generally I agree that internal consistency is the aim, and agree too about the groups. SlimVirgin (talk) 03:49, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
Break 3
This isn't a race or about numbers alone, so I'm closing the running tally. SlimVirgin (talk) 18:44, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Tally against removal of "not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole" vs. for

As of now, responses are 2:1 in opposition of removal (AKA support of reinsertion). Would anyone like to offer or summarize evidence or change his or her position? Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:18, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

I make it 12:7, Darkfrog. [Now updated: see new subsection below.–Noetica]
Is this Request for Comments now being closed by a nonadmin after only 10 days? Neotarf (talk) 07:00, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
[After refactoring to make the new tally subsection, below:] And as we all know, an RFC should not be decided on the numbers, but on the arguments advanced. I submit that refusals to answer questions, and misrepresentations of issues, ought to be taken into account also.
I have notified three editors whom I contacted earlier (because they had earlier commented on the issue, with varying opinions), to let them know that you are counting votes here. The matter is important, and there is no rush for it to be concluded.
I suggest that we do indeed start a subsection for summarising the issues. Let it be one in which each side collaborates to produce a summary of its own case in 500 words – so there would be just two clear statements to read, side by side. Care to start?
NoeticaTea? 05:47, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
(I'm one of those Noetica contacted, thanks for that as I had been following the discussion and intending to respond but also "rather busy" the last few days. --Mirokado (talk) 14:00, 11 September 2012 (UTC))
This poll is not meant to close the discussion, only to facilitate bringing it to resolution. As for the theory, I'd love it if RfCs could be decided based on issues rather than on numbers, but how often does that happen around here? Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:01, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
Tally of votes
continually updated

Oppose removal

  1. SlimVirgin
  2. Enric Naval
  3. Quiddity
  4. Amatulić
  5. Binksternet
  6. Shenme
  7. Darkfrog24
  8. jc37
  9. Beyond My Ken
  10. Jimp
  11. Peter coxhead
  12. CBM [derived from a reading of the contribution]
  13. Resolute
  14. Hiding

Support removal

  1. Noetica
  2. SMcCandlish
  3. Ohconfucius
  4. Boson
  5. Dicklyon
  6. Tony
  7. 86.160.221.242 [derived from a reading of the contribution]
  8. Neotarf
  9. Mirokado
  10. Br'er Rabbit [derived from a reading of the contribution]

[Updated by NoeticaTea? 12:17, 14 September 2012 (UTC)]

Counting votes

  • I have reinstated the tally (see subsection below). No one should think that numbers alone count; but the voting has become diffused or replicated by quotation in various subsections. Quite confusing for newcomers, I might add! These lists serve an index of contributions so people can find them and evaluate their arguments. NoeticaTea? 22:11, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
  • And I have closed it again. If you want to open your own RfC later you're welcome to do that, but keeping a running tally of numbers is pointless at best, so please allow this RfC to run its course without it. SlimVirgin (talk) 03:33, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
  • I have no view one way or the other on the above discussion about including or not including the sentence about Wikipedia as a whole other than to comment that you might as well reverse the two words not and necessarily if it is included - just a comment... Apteva (talk) 09:27, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Presentation of evidence for and against "not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole"

I think this discussion might benefit from a summary of the evidence presented. Please limit discussions to things that can be verified (rather than discussing reasoning alone). I have paraphrased four other editors below and I invite them to replace my words with their own as they see fit. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:47, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Non-hypothetical evidence for and against "not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole"

This section is for listing problems, such as fights and edit conflicts, that have actually happened. Practical experience falls under this category. Please show how the wording "not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole" caused the problem or would have prevented it. Contributors, please post links to the relevant changes, talk pages and archives whenever possible. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:47, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

  • Enric Naval cited arbcom case "Findings of fact" (Enric N, please feel free to replace these lines with a brief explanation of why you think this discussion is relevant and why you think the inclusion of these words would have prevented problems.)[30]
  • Enric Naval cited arbcom case "Date delinking" (Enric N, please feel free to replace these lines with a brief explanation of why you think this discussion is relevant and why you think the inclusion of these words would have prevented problems.)[31]
  • Noetica said that the Mexican-American war page has to do with this issue. (Noetica, please feel free to replace these lines with a brief explanation of why you think this discussion is relevant and why you think the exclusion of these words would have prevented problems.) [32]
  • Quiddity cited the infobox discussion below as evidence that the absence of the words "not necessarily..." from the MoS can cause fights. (Quiddity, please feel free to replace these lines with a brief explanation of why you think this discussion is relevant and why you think the inclusion of these words would have prevented problems.) [33]
Hypothetical evidence for and against "not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole"

This section is for listing problems or advantages that you believe would or could happen but haven't witnessed. PLEASE BE SPECIFIC. Don't say "this wording will be misused" or "this wording will keep Wikipedia running smoothly"; say how you think it will be misused or keep things running smoothly and why. Contributors, please include links where relevant. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:47, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

  • Mirokado is concerned that inconsistency between articles that a reader regards as closely related will deliver an inferior reader experience (for example not knowing where to find corresponding information in each article). --Mirokado (talk) 00:01, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
This view is shared by many who oppose re-insertion of the contested wording. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:22, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Mikorado cited many articles dealing with the works of Anne McCaffrey and said that inter-article consistency facilitated making repairs and improvements by saving the editors' time and making any remaining issues more visible. --Mirokado (talk) 00:01, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
Mikorado expressed a concern that reinsertion of the wording might cause some editors to render the articles inconsistent and therefore harder to repair and improve. (Feel free to reword or correct the previous sentence and attribute to yourself if you see fit to do so.) No specific case has been cited. Move this point to non-hypothetical if even one such case can be found. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:22, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Mikorado cited many articles within List of Horror Films and said that inter-article consistency facilitated making repairs and improvements by saving the editors' time and making any remaining issues more visible. --Mirokado (talk) 00:01, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
Mikorado expressed a concern that reinsertion of the wording might cause some editors to render the articles inconsistent and therefore harder to repair and improve. (Feel free to reword or correct the previous sentence and attribute to yourself if you see fit to do so.) No specific case case has been cited. Move this point to non-hypothetical if even one such case can be found. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:22, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Summary of RfC: “Internal consistency versus consistency across articles”

A request for closure has been made, and the bot has removed the RFC tag, and in the meantime the thread has been archived. I have unarchived it and attempted to summarize the issues as follows.

Wording:

It is proposed to add the following sentence to the fourth paragraph of the introduction: “An overriding principle is that style and formatting choices should be consistent within an article, though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole.” There is a consensus, or at least no opposition, to adding the first part of the sentence, but the second part of the sentence is contested.


Issues:

  • Those who wish to add “though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole” say it is needed in order to discourage those who want to use similar format for similar articles, and that style issues should be determined by personal preference.
  • Those who do not wish to add “though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole” say it will discourage similar styling in groups of articles on similar topics, that the phrase is confusing and has been used for pointless argument, and that consistency across the Wikipedia as a whole is the purpose of having a Manual of Style in the first place


Survey:

  • Support adding “though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole”: SlimVirgin, Enric Naval, Quiddity, Amatulić, Binksternet, Shenme, Darkfrog24, jc37, Beyond My Ken, Jimp, Peter coxhead, CBM [derived from a reading of the contribution], Resolute, Hiding, 87.112.91.134, Jayron32, WhatamIdoing
  • Oppose adding “though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole”: Noetica, SMcCandlish, Ohconfucius, Boson, Dicklyon, Tony, 86.160.221.242 [derived from a reading of the contribution], Neotarf, Mirokado, Br’er Rabbit [derived from a reading of the contribution], 128.127.107.10, 87.79.226.106, Rreagan007

Neotarf (talk) 21:09, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

We should probably add that this is a restoration vs. endorsement of removal rather than an add. The words "not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole" were originally in the MoS. This is about whether to put them back, not whether to add them for the first time.
Ideally, disagreements on Wikipedia are supposed to be decided by the preponderance of sources and evidence rather than by the preponderance of proponents. So far, only one person has offered real evidence that having or not having this phrase in the MoS would make any material difference in the reader or editor experience, and that is Eric N, who cited disputes in which the idea of internal consistency was involved. Mirokado cited a few hypothetical problems but nothing has actually happened. A lot of the opposition to re-adding these words has been "this is unnecessary" rather than "this would cause problems." Most of the support for re-adding these words has been "the absence of these words can cause problems." Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:43, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
Just to clarify, while there may or may not have been a request to close the RfC, it is my understanding that the bot would have removed the tag tomorrow but when the thread got archived with the tag in it the RFCbot removed the tag from the archive. In any case, in closing an RfC what is important is not a tally of votes, but a summary of arguments. In my view, I have already commented that a consistent style is necessarily not possible across WP as a whole, and was not expressing any view one way or the other about the inclusion or exclusion of that or any other part of the sentence. I would also like to add that the words "An overriding principle" are a bit over the top, as that would tend to indicate that there were other principles that were not as important. This RfC reminds me of the problem of drafting anything by committee. What actually works is for one person to go off and write a proposal, and then have the committee edit and improve it, or even reject that wording. When a committee tries to write something it takes forever to discuss each word. Apteva (talk) 20:48, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
Note that Apteva has changed the archiving time to 60 days [34] and has also altered various other archiving parameters. [35][36] Apteva also notes on my talk page that "There are about three copies of one of the RfC's in one of the archives left over from other times that RfC was un-archived, and they can all be simply deleted from the archive, but that has not reached the top of my to do list."
Neotarf (talk) 08:08, 30 September 2012 (UTC)
Those are technical changes. The bot has already moved on to /Archive130, and when the archive was unarchived the internal bot counter was inadvertently changed back to 129 which would have meant that new archives would go back on /Archive129 instead of where they belonged, on /Archive130. 600k is in my opinion horrendously large for archive pages. Mostly this page had been manually archived, and many of the archive pages are on the order of 25k, not even 200k. An edit summary noted that the archive was being split into smaller archives. The bot automatically archives any thread with no response in 7 days, and the RfC was split into sections that are getting replies and those with no responses, so it seemed easier to just tell the bot to slow down until the RfC is closed, particularly because there were two of them open at the time. In another 5 days both will have expired and the archiving can go back to 7 days. Apteva (talk) 05:10, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Actually, Darkfrog24, if you check the links, and I did, the contested words are not present on the page, awaiting possible removal. They were removed last year. And SMcCandlish and Noetica both presented specific examples of problems that had been caused by that phrase before it was changed. On the other hand, no one has shown anything negative that has actually happened in the last year without the contested phrase. Neotarf (talk) 20:59, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
I didn't say that they were currently on the page and that we were discussing their removal. I said that they used to be on the page and we were discussing reinserting them vs. endorsing their removal after the fact: "This is about whether to put them back, not whether to add them for the first time." As someone pointed out, a year is not so long for the MoS. If the person who removed it had discussed it on the talk page first (not required, but on this page it often helps), then the change probably wouldn't have gone through, if this discussion is any example.
I read SMC's and Noetica's posts and I didn't see any specific examples of anything, but they do both go on and it's possible that things got buried in the rhetoric. What evidence did they present? Noetica said "Look at this Mexican-American War discussion" but didn't say what he thought that discussion had to do with this one. Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:05, 30 September 2012 (UTC)
And the contested words used to be *NOT* on this page. Rather you should be asking with what discussion they were inserted in the first place, and with what edit summary.
You didn't seem to have any trouble finding the evidence presented by SMcCandlish and Noetica when you argued against it in the above discussion. But this is not summary material, it is just a repetition of arguments already in the (rather long and unorganized) discussion section. You were invited before to make a summary of why this material should be added, and you did not do so.
Neotarf (talk) 07:45, 30 September 2012 (UTC)
Neotarf, I most certainly did and do have trouble finding the evidence that Noetica and SMC may or may not have presented: [37]. They both said "inter-article consistency is desirable" but didn't cite any cases in which the wording in question caused any problems with the possible exception that Noetica said "read the Mex-Am war page" but didn't say why. That's not an argument against evidence. It's a request for evidence. You seem to have missed this the first time, so I'll be more explicit: If you saw something that I did not, please point it out to me.
Maybe you and I aren't using the word "evidence" the same way. I would consider what Enric and Mikorado did to be evidence. Enric cited disputes that actually happened, with a link. Mikorado referred to specific articles and events and said why those articles might be threatened. It was hypothetical, but it made sense. Noetica and SMC both expressed a bunch of opinions, but I don't consider that to be evidence.
Neotarf, you will note that I said, "This is about whether to put them back, not whether to add them for the first time." I am not trying to trick anyone. I feel that there is a difference between restoring wording that used to be there and proposing new wording. Technically, the whole MoS used to not be there.
I actually did give a summary of why I think the wording should be restored. It's a few threads up under "oppose removal."[38]
As for "what discussion and with what edit summary," Quiddity dug that stuff up a couple weeks ago. Hit CTRL-F for "legwork" and you'll see a bunch of links. [39] Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:47, 30 September 2012 (UTC)
Re: "no one has shown anything negative" - see the huge thread about infoboxes below! (and all the grumbling about it in many elsewheres, where the rubber meets the road). Site-wide-Consistency is one of the main arguments in favour of "infoboxes everywhere, regardless of objections".
See WP:ENGVAR. See WP:DATES ("Consistency in style and formatting promotes clarity and cohesion; this is especially important within an article"). See the very strong opinions that different groups with different priorities bring to other xVAR discussions. See WP:RETAIN.
We clearly still hold the value of “though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole”, but removing that phrase from this MoS page removes the explicit mention, and makes it merely implicit in the minds of those who follow it in various circumstances. Removing it moves us closer to being a bureaucracy. It should be retained (replaced), for the same reasons that IAR needs to be stated explicitly and also repeated in many places. —Quiddity (talk) 21:21, 1 October 2012 (UTC)


Premature closure reversed

With this edit I reversed a non-admin closure of the RFC. Clearly there is no consensus, so the RFC should be closed by an admin. The editor (User:Nathan Johnson) erred in not realising this, and by less than competent summation of the issues. In particular, he completely failed to distinguish consistency in general (the purpose of all manuals of style, including MOS) and consistency where MOS allows choices. This distinction is crucial among the issues confronting us in the RFC, in a number of ways.
As a central participant, concerned at least as much about due process as about the outcome of the RFC, I have been absent from Wikipedia for the last week for personal reasons. I mentioned one reason on this talkpage, and put a note at my talkpage. Meanwhile, Darkfrog wanted some summation from each side. I will be able to provide my summation within the next 24 hours. I ask to be given a chance to do that.
If this RFC results in insertion of the contested wording, I will consider issuing a new RFC to address the genuine issues that have been aired in the course of this one. The conflation of utterly separate types of consistency has seen a great deal of time wasted. The proposer of this RFC should have known better, and so should a number of participants. An RFC should be framed, and discussed, in a way that keeps separate issues separate – from start to finish. ☺
Addition: Even as I wrote, the editor reverted my reversion. I have reverted that reversion, but will not do so again.
NoeticaTea? 23:05, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

I concur that this discussion is not finished yet. Noetica did right in reverting the closure.
Yes things would be simpler if certain ideas were kept separate. The biggest example of this is that, as can be seen on other WP: pages, Wikipedia favors intra-article consistency and not necessarily inter-article consistency. The issue that SlimV raised was whether or not WP: MoS should say so, not whether the rule should be changed, but both issues have been discussed in this thread. Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:14, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
Noetica is simply incompetent. There is nothing special about admins closing RfC. -Nathan Johnson (talk) 14:58, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
Noetica is many, many things (I could tell you stories) but he has not shown himself to be incompetent. If you believe that Noetica has broken a rule or acted improperly, then explain yourself or file a complaint. There's no need to use insults. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:35, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
Thank you Nathan. And thank you for not caring (see my talkpage). Surely it is appreciated when non-admins step in to clear backlogs of work that admins normally do; but I think you misjudged, this time. NoeticaTea? 21:54, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
Agree to keep discussion open. Darkfrog has done some framing of the policy problem and Noetica has returned and wishes to respond. Since there is no consensus, perhaps further discussion will help clarify the issue. It would certainly save time in the long run if the issue could be dispensed with. Neotarf (talk) 18:12, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
I am a little delayed (beyond the 24 hours I had expected). I will submit a summary later today. In Australia, that is; so let's say on 6 October by UTC. NoeticaTea? 21:54, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Noetica, you seem to be making this up as you go along. There is absolutely nothing in the policy which prefers an admin closure over a non-admin closure. Any RFC "can be formally closed by any uninvolved editor". I suggest you undo your reversions, and start to play by the same rules as the rest of us. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 18:20, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

No, Safely Anonymous. I am acting in good faith to preserve due process. See remarks I have just posted below. There is nothing in policy or anywhere else to preclude my actions, prompted by wild irregularities in the conduct of this RFC. (It was already closed by the BOT, note!)
NoeticaTea? 22:49, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
You didn't "preserve due process". You reverted the closure, which was made by an uninvolved editor, because you, an involved editor, disagreed with his assessment. What kind of chaos would result if every editor did that "in good faith" whenever they disagreed with the result of an RFC? 23:07, 8 October 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.90.43.8 (talk)

Noetica's RFC summation

[This is my final systematic statement in the RFC. I request that no one post comments or questions within it, only after it.–NoeticaTea? 14:26, 6 October 2012 (UTC)]

Procedural problems

There have been problems with this RFC from the start, and they have obscured the issues most unproductively, as I will show below. Procedural problems include these:

  • Biased wording in the advertising of the RFC. Some of that was fixed at my insistence, though reluctantly (on evidence from refusals to reword things for accuracy at my request before the formal RFC). At the head of the RFC my correction can be seen.
  • Poor oversight by the proposer of the RFC. SlimVirgin has done little to keep things on track, except twice to hide my own efforts at recording the state of the voting (though all acknowledge that this count is not the sole or main consideration in an RFC).
  • Replication of entire votes, including prohibited copying of signatures. My attempts to rectify that chaotic development were also reverted in part by SlimVirgin. They are what prompted me to register the votes in one place; but in an apparent assertion of ownership, I was overruled. I gave up such attempts. The RFC remains sprawling and barely navigable.
  • Loss of the RFC tagging. The RFC was archived, but SlimVirgin did nothing to rectify this. It was left to Neotarf (a far less experienced editor) to sort the mess out. Neotarf did well, but the status of the discussion as a legitimate RFC has been left uncertain.
History of the text in question (November 2008; August 2011)
  • SlimVirgin was the editor who originally inserted the contested wording ("... though not necessarily throughout the encyclopedia as a whole"), with this edit of 21 November 2008.
  • SlimVirgin's edit summary does not reveal in any way that she added it, or even which point she was addressing exactly: "(→‎Consistency: created new header to emphasize this point; removed sentence from previous section that seemed to contradict it)". The intent of the edit cannot be determined from that summary.
  • No evidence has been adduced in this RFC that SlimVirgin's edit was discussed first, or had any sort of consensual backing.
  • Tony edited to rationalise the early part of the page, with this edit of 4 August 2011.
  • Tony's edit summary did reveal the intent and effects of his edit: "(Rationalise unruly bunch of mini-sections ('principles'). Reduce negative angle. Rm repetition and redundancy. See talk page.)".
  • Tony's edit did refer to discussion on the talkpage.
  • The section on the talkpage that Tony initiated ("Extraneous clutter at the top") drew considerable participation. The discussion Tony started runs to just under 4,000 words (about eight A4 pages).
  • The discussion Tony started did make reference, with a diff, specifically to SlimVirgin's text:

And the "general principles" section that these were stuck into had its start in this diff by SlimVirgin. Probably, in retrospect, saying "General Principles" made it a magnet for people with an agenda to sneak things into. [Dicklyon (talk) 06:13, 3 August 2011 (UTC)]

Well, Slim's good with this stuff, but probably didn't envisage that it would become the unruly forest we now see. [Tony (talk) 06:40, 3 August 2011 (UTC)]

  • Tony's removal of the contested wording was unchallenged for more than twelve months (till a few weeks ago).
My position
  • The central purpose of Wikipedia's Manual of Style (MOS, with WP:MOS as its main page) is to present style guidelines for all Wikipedia articles. As discussion above shows, this natural account of manual of styles in general has been endorsed by ArbCom, and no one has offered any plausible alternative purpose for having MOS at all.
  • The great majority of MOS provisions are what I call singular guidelines. That is, they recommend just one option among possible alternative style choices. This follows naturally from its central purpose; to the extent that it does not select form the range of possible alternatives, it fails as a manual of style.
  • In just very few areas, more than one option is allowed for. These MOS-permitted alternatives include systematic variations in English (like US or British), variation in choice of dash for sentence punctuation (spaced en dash or unspaced em dash), management of possessives ending with an /s/ or /z/ sound, and so on.
  • The contested wording fails to make clear the crucial difference between singular guidelines and MOS-permitted alternatives.
  • The crucial difference can be extracted from wording that comes immediately after (like this, in MOS as it stands right now: "Where more than one style is acceptable, editors should not change an article from one of those styles to another without a substantial reason. Revert-warring over optional styles is unacceptable.") But in practice, such a continuation is not cited at article talkpages: just the text finishing with the contested wording.
  • The best evidence for this and related confusions can be found in this very RFC and the discussion leading up to it (all underlining is mine):
  • "I am opposing the removal because style consistency across articles has always been discouraged since the 'date delinking' edit wars years ago. It's clear and concise."
[Enric Naval. An alarming misrepresentation of the very purpose of MOS. "Clear and concise"? Concise, but on the evidence here it is not at all clear.]
  • "[After a challenge from Mirokado:] Hum, my bad. A better wording: 'enforcing consistency across articles has always been discouraged'."
[Enric's correction is still inaccurate, since the purpose of MOS's singular guidelines (see above) is indeed consistency across 4,000,000 articles. Enric's continuation can be read above on this talkpage; but it reveals no clear conception of MOS guidelines, instead showing that he perhaps wavers in his attitude to the contested wording.]
  • " 'I feel like it, I raised it on the talk page, and no one objected within a reasonable time frame,' is sufficient reason [for a change in style]".
    ...
    "People should need a reason to make such changes. That reason need not be big. It can be 'I feel like it, I raised it on the talk page, and no one objected.' However, 'We have to make these articles match because they're closely related in subject!' is false."
[Darkfrog. These are bizarre priorities, according to which consistency between even related articles takes lowest place of all; they suggest a misunderstanding of provisions of MOS itself, and of WP:CONSENSUS.]
  • "I do not believe that we should add P3 to the MoS"
    "We shouldn't add more rules without a good, non-hypothetical reason."
[Darkfrog. P3 was an abstract proposition I put forward (see above on the page); no one suggests that it ought to be included. But then, the contested wording is itself in the category of "more rules"; so how can its inclusion be supported without "a good, non-hypothetical reason"? No one has demonstrated that its loss was felt over the last twelve months!]
  • "We should assume that anything written down in the MoS will be cited as gospel on article talk pages."
[Darkfrog. But then, gospel can be interpreted many ways – especially when it includes words like "not necessarily" (which caused some difficulty for Enric as I have shown just above), and is turned to political purposes (see citations of "gospel" in the archives of Talk:Mexican–American War, where Enric and Darkfrog are among those who insist on conflating singular guidelines and MOS-permitted alternatives for crusading purposes).]
  • "The MoS may be only a guideline in theory, but in practice, it's a set of hard rules. That means that we should treat any new additions to the MoS as if they will be cited as gospel on talk pages."
[Darkfrog. Again dealing with singular guidelines and MOS-permitted alternatives as if there were no distinction; and ignoring the explicit directive at the head of every MOS page: "Use common sense in applying it; it will have occasional exceptions." This is a confusion about a confusion. MOS explicitly does the opposite of claiming to be "a set of hard rules"; and it is the responsibility of its readers to ... read it!]
  • "The policy is that cross-article consistency is permitted but not required."
[Darkfrog. But note that MOS is not policy. The nearest relevant policy is at WT:TITLE, which by the way includes inter-article consistency as a basic principle.]
  • "The MoS does not have a default position for inter-article consistency."
[Darkfrog. Yet again confusing MOS-permitted alternatives (inter-article consistency not called for) and singular guidelines (inter-article consistency definitely intended).]
  • "The MoS does (or used to and should again) state that intra-article consistency is its purpose."
[Darkfrog. Plainly not a fair reading of the contested wording, and opposed to the very purpose of any manual of style.]
  • "Inter- but not intra-article consistency strikes a balance between neatness and the diversity of opinion among our editors."
[Darkfrog. Just muddled. Is it what was meant, in fact? Even reversing "inter-" and "intra-" here, it yet again ignores the distinction between singular guidelines and MOS-permitted alternatives.]
  • "I disagree with 'In groups of articles on similar topics, similar styling is better than an unprincipled or random selection of styles.' [T]his has never been a requirement."
[PBS. Again, it is astonishing to see the priorities here – as if there were not many projects within Wikipedia that see the value of treating their articles with extra consistency, beyond what MOS calls for. And of course this is a non sequitur: "[T]his has never been a requirement." Of course there is no explicit and particular "requirement" that one should avoid what is random and unprincipled in style choices. But if we appeal to common sense at the head of MOS pages, that would seem to include orderly and principled decision-making.]
  • "The problem is what is a group?"
[PBS, and elsewhere Enric Naval and Darkfrog. But this can hardly be the problem, in efforts toward harmonising thematically related articles. There are others, like Which style choice is apt for that theme? And even if it were the problem, that does not preclude the finding of solutions, or workarounds; and it cannot be shown to apply in every situation. For an obvious example, the articles on the chemical elements form a perfectly natural grouping, and it naturally trumps any competing grouping that might intersect with it like "common substances", "valuable substances", or "dangerous substances".]
  • "I suspect that while the argument about obvious groups is superficially attractive, due to the problems lack of clarity in defining a group, it will eventual[ly] lead inexorably towards harmonisation of style over large parts of Wikipedia."
[PBS. Some of us will struggle to see how that could be a problem!]
  • "There has never been style consistency across articles on WP, ..."
[SlimVirgin. Confusing, yet again, singular guidelines and MOS-permitted alternatives.]
  • "There has never been consensus to introduce style consistency across articles; on the contrary, there has always been opposition to it."
    ...
    "There has always been an understanding that internal consistency is required when it comes to style issues, but not consistency across articles."
[SlimVirgin. Confusing, once more, singular guidelines and MOS-permitted alternatives. And ignoring the very reason for MOS to exist.]
  • "The problem is that the second and third paragraphs contradict each other. The second says we have a house style; the third says we do not."
    ...
    "The second paragraph says there is a house style, but the third paragraph says there isn't, so there's a contradiction right there. It matters less if the two paragraphs are read together, but the separate anchors mean they might not be. The question is: to what extent does Wikipedia have a house style, or to what extent does it allow contributors to choose a style so long as there is internal consistency?"
[SlimVirgin. No, that was never the case. Same confusion. And "the question" rests on that confusion of singular guidelines and MOS-permitted alternatives.]
  • "The words in question were in the MoS for quite some time, and were removed without discussion."
[SlimVirgin. Wrong. See diffs above, and the link to an archived 4,000-word discussion.]
  • "The word 'necessarily' is important here. It signals that consistency across articles may sometimes, or regularly, be appropriate, but not invariably, and that some style issues are left to the editors on the page to decide."
[SlimVirgin. But the word 'necessarily' is one of the most confusing and misread elements in all of this. See misreadings cited above, including statements by SlimVirgin herself.]
  • "The MOS is not a prescription to be applied slavishly to all articles."
[Amatulić. This is not what the RFC is about, though many have assumed that it must be. The same muddying of issues that we see above. The level of authoritative status that the community accords to MOS is one matter; MOS's varying recommendations in singular guidelines and MOS-permitted alternatives is another.]
  • "A short phrase serves as a useful reminder of that fact, and its removal, as Enric Naval pointed out, leaves room for other interpretations, contributing to wasted time in needless debates about inter-article consistency."
[Amatulić's continuation. But as we see abundantly from the quotes above, it is the inclusion of the contested words that brings confusion! Has there been confusion over the last twelve months, while it was absent?]
  • "We should emphasize that we are not here to make everybody toe the same line. If somebody's formatting can be traced to a practice that is accepted in a particular venue, then that formatting should be allowed."
[Binksternet. But the contested wording does not emphasize that; or at least, if it is interpreted most reasonably in the light of what should follow it (about MOS-permitted alternatives), then that emphasis is very slight. The second sentence here leaves room for speculation; it seems to appeal to efforts toward inter-article consistency, but it could amount to a rejection even of MOS's singular guidelines! On either reading, there is confusion of issues.]
  • "Removing the explicit allowance for editors to not be required to conform to the tittle of MOS, through a change by the MOS-most editors, is troubling on multiple levels."
[Shenme. But that is not what the contested wording is about at all; and not what this RFC is about!]
  • "Oppose removal/retain - This would also seem to fall afoul of WP:ENGVAR, among other things..."
[jc37. How? Why? The editor does not say. Has the force of ENGVAR somehow appeared diminished over the last twelve months?]
  • "Ideally nothing would depend on such a fine balance of words, but experience of Wikipedia editing suggests to me that either wording will be used by those who cherry-pick the MOS to support a prior position. 'Sensible' editors already understand that intra-article consistency is a priority, and that inter-article consistency is highly desirable, and that both kinds of consistency are subject to consensus, not ownership. Unfortunately many editors are not 'sensible'."
    ...
    "I'm concerned that removing the wording will encourage uncooperative behaviour, ..."
[Peter Coxhead. And I will close with his very thoughtful words, which ought to be studied in their entirety above. In my own experience, almost any wording can be perverted to uncooperative ends. We have to draft Wikipedia guidelines and policy with skill, diligence, and goodwill to minimise that. Where I disagree with Peter is on the inclusion of the contested wording, which in my experience, and from the evidence of the quotes above, is spectacularly subject to misreading, misrepresentation, and all manner of abuse.]
  • In light of the evidence just given, I oppose any simple patchwork solution to optimising the wording of MOS's lead: especially the restoration of wording that brings such serious and counterproductive confusion.
  • I propose that the contested wording remain excluded from MOS, and that there be a new discussion toward accommodating all points of view about the status of MOS within Wikipedia. That seems to be the issue to which most of those wanting the wording restored have gravitated, rather than what it actually says.
  • If somehow this chaotic and compromised RFC were to succeed, anyone should feel free to start another one on more rational principles to address what remains totally muddled in this one (including in the proposal the removal of wording discussed here). I might do that myself, if I can find the time.

NoeticaTea? 14:26, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Noetica, I think you are overestimating the level or order that is required of an RfC and the specificity of the actions required of the person who starts it. Is it nice if things have a clear structure? A lot of the time. Did SlimV break some rule or act irresponsibly by not enforcing such a structure (and is controlling other people in that way even reasonably possible)? No.
Maybe Eric N and those others whom you cite were not misunderstanding the MoS. Maybe you have misunderstood it. The only thing that we know for sure is that you and they (and I) do not agree. The fact that someone disagrees with you is not evidence that you are right and they are wrong.
The statement "We have to make these articles match because they're closely related in subject" is false. I'm referring to rules, to what the MoS requires, which is why I chose the words "have to." Does the MoS require inter-article consistency? No it does not. But it doesn't forbid it either. That is why I find "I like it. I raised it on the talk page and no one objected within a reasonable amount of time" to be a good defense of optional changes.
By "cited as gospel," I mean "taken as a rule that is not open to exception or deviation," not "treated as one would treat a religious text."
When I say, "In practice, the MoS is a set of hard rules," I mean that people can be censured and punished for disobeying it. "The MoS is just a guideline, so I can ignore it if I feel my changes make the article better" is no defense at all to an AN/I.
The MoS does not have a default setting for inter-article consistency. No part of it says "inter-article consistency is required." It explicitly permits editors to make their own choices with respect to British and American English, the serial comma, etc. etc.
What evidence? Noetica, you have not presented any evidence. You've only presented opinions: some of your own, and some of others, many of which you seem to have misunderstood.
You mentioned the Mex-Am War talk page again. What exactly do you think that that event has to do with the inclusion or exclusion of this wording? No, it is not obvious from looking at that talk page. (And the word "gospel" does not appear on it.)
Maybe the reason why "everyone has failed to mention the distinction between singular guideline and MoS-permitted alternatives" is because allowing people to use incorrect English isn't the issue. This entire discussion has been about what you call MoS-permitted alternatives from the start.

Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:40, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Time to close this (RfC for re-insertion of "not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole")

The RfC had been open for 33 days, and it was closed by an uninvolved editor, [40] so I can't see any reason not to respect the closure. Restoring a sentence to a guideline shouldn't require this level of meta discussion. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:02, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

It obviously does because the added text is wholly inadequate to address the issues it purports to deal with. The only way of closing the rfc at present would be "no consensus" which would mean restoring the text which had been stable for a year or so. Actually I would be quite happy with that... And I will not accept a non-admin closure of this either, it is far too contentious. --Mirokado (talk)
Why wouldn't you accept a non-admin closure? What is special about administrators that means they, and only they, can close this?!? --Jayron32 19:07, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
Administrators adjudicate policy disputes, and hence are solely authorized to close, say, contested Afds. There is nothing in WP policy or guidelines which says uninvolved editors cannot close contested RFCs, since they are not binding. Noetica's idea of closing the discussion with Noetica's own lengthy summary (an involved editor's summary) seems not ok. Asking for an administrator to arbiter what is essentially an editorial dispute is not ok either. Reverting an uninvolved editor's closure is acceptable on grounds the summary is incorrect, but not on the grounds he (specific case here) is a non-admin. Churn and change (talk) 21:14, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
I made a summation for the side that opposes insertion of the contested wording. Did you miss where there was discussion of each side doing such a thing? I clearly labelled it as my summation. Surely anyone is welcome to do one of those. Make your own, if you like. But stick to facts – and opinions that are supported by evidence and argument. As I do, right?
And this is not simply an "editorial dispute", as you call it. As if we were dealing with a mere article! No: we are dealing with Wikipedia's core style resource, affecting 4,000,000 articles. Spot the difference.
NoeticaTea? 09:19, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
A highly flawed and misleading summation in which you consistently if unintentionally misrepresent the meanings of other editors' statements and present no evidence in favor of your position. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:01, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
Clearly we disagree about that. But remember: it was my summation, of the sort that I believe you had called for, some time back. You replied to it, as you were entitled to. And I let your reply stand, giving you the last word (as things stand). Good enough? If you make a similar summation of your own, I will reply to it. Will you give me the last word, when I do so?
NoeticaTea? 22:10, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
No I didn't ask you to do that. I invited you to present and explain evidence, specifically your comment that the discussion o Mex-Am page has to do with this discussion.
You are not being gracious by not removing other people's comments. That is required of you. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:37, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
  • You made a summation, Darkfrog. And you invited others to participate in such a process: "I think this discussion might benefit from a summary of the evidence presented. Please limit discussions to things that can be verified (rather than discussing reasoning alone)." Neotarf independently made a summary. I too chose not to proceed in the exact way the way you had set up, because I regarded it as skewed and disorganised. After announcing clearly that I would do so, I gave a summation from my point of view. I labelled my summary clearly: as mine. You did not do such a thing. I now invite you to make a summation that overtly presents things as you see them (not purporting to be a summary for all sides). Forgive me if I misunderstood: I thought you were in favour of people presenting such epitomes from the various points of view. You answered my summation, and I then let you have the last word. How long would you like this to drag on?
  • You write: "You are not being gracious by not removing other people's comments" [sic]. Sorting through others' dirty work, one gets dirty hands. This RFC was a disgrace from the beginning – from before the beginning, in fact. I have a particular interest in due process. Quibble selectively as you like; and I will act as I see fit in accord with policy and guidelines, in the interest of MOS as I see it. And therefore in the interest of Wikipedia, as I see it.
NoeticaTea? 01:50, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
Yes, a summary of the evidence as opposed to the previous parts of the discussion, which had focused primarily on opinions and hypothetical reasoning. No, the summation that you gave was not what I asked you to do. I'm not saying that you have to do exactly what I tell you to, but then you don't get to say that this was "of a sort that I believe you had asked for," as you do above.
Disorganized? It was divided up by subject and then by chronology. It might not have been set up the way you would have done it, but it was not disorganized.
I've already presented things as I see them. The participants in this discussion have already read and responded to everyone's opinions. That's why I thought a new angle, evidence, might be more productive. More than half of the participants support reinsertion of the wording, but that's not how consensus is supposed to work. More than half of the evidence would be another matter.
Refraining from removing other people's comments is not due process. You don't get to pat yourself on the back for not doing something that you're not supposed to do anyway.
And there is no need for an sic next to my words. My usage is correct. Informality does not require an sic. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:10, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
First, I put "an sic" next to my quotation of your words because I would not want anyone to think I introduced an error into them. Look again: "You are not being gracious by not removing other people's comments." It struck me, and it may strike others, as a strange construction that possibly has one "not" too many. So a "sic" is justified and normal. Assume good faith.
Second, I am not obliged to do what you asked me to do, as (obviously!) neither you nor anyone else has an obligation to do what I want.
Third, I explicitly chose to narrow my evidence to the copious misunderstandings that are evident on this page. That is potent evidence, and easily checked in one place. You ask for more? Sorry, I have given all that is needed, and spent far more time than I can justify on this RFC (if indeed it is still an RFC).
Fourth, I wrote: "I regarded it as skewed and disorganised." So yes: as you rightly diagnosed, we disagree. Surprised? I made my own solution, neatly labelling it.
Fifth, move on now?
NoeticaTea? 03:46, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
Strange construction does not merit an sic. And no it does not have too many nots. I am not being a saint by not stealing from you. You are not being gracious by not deleting other people's comments. Count before you sic. As for assuming good faith, don't push your gosh darn luck; you've already had plenty of benefit of the doubt from me.
Noetica, I just said that you aren't obliged to do what I tell you. I also said, "If you don't do what I tell you, you don't get to say 'I'm only doing what you told me!'" No, I didn't ask you to post a long list of your own arbitrary opinions peppered with misinterpretations of other contributors. Again, you can do your own thing, but then you don't get to claim that it's my thing.
If you didn't have time to post, you wouldn't be posting. My guess? You're having a grand old time. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:50, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
Keep guessing, Darkfrog. I find all of this most unpleasant, and a serious intrusion into things that I have to get on with, to meet real-life obligations and deadlines. You could simply drop the business of "an sic". I wish you would! I used "sic" in good faith, and I explained why I used it; but you refuse to leave it at that. Do just leave it at that, OK? You said that I misinterpret others' comments; I chose to let you have the last word, when you alleged that in answer to my extended submission above. Happy? I say you misinterpret me; but I really want not to dwell on any of that now. Enough!
NoeticaTea? 05:58, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
There actually is a way to get people to stop replying to you on a thread. Instead of telling other people to shut up or complaining that you have a million other things to do, all of which are more important than the discussion or the people who've been talking to you, you stop posting on it yourself. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:39, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
Noetica reverted Nathan Johnson's closure twice, [41] [42] with the edit summary: "Revert closure of RFC by User:Nathan Johnson; controversial RFCs should be closed by admins; this was premature: actions had been asked for and were pending; failed to distinguish points about consistency 1. where choices were allowed and 2. generally)".
The RfC had been open for 33 days, so there was nothing premature about the closure. There's also nothing controversial about the RfC. Nathan has closed RfCs before and the request for closure was made on AN/RFC, so it all seemed to be in order. I've requested an uninvolved admin to endorse or overturn the closure, but it really shouldn't be necessary. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:52, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
Noetica is now reverting my explanation for the closing admin. [43] SlimVirgin (talk) 22:27, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
Yes Slim; and I have in good faith reverted your reversion of my action.
In fact the RFC was already ended, by the BOT. Before Nathan got to it. From WP:RFC:

There are several ways an RfC can end: the bot can automatically delist the RfC, the RfC participants can agree to end it, or it can be formally closed by any uninvolved editor.

That can be read as final; or it can be read as just one element in the disruptive and irregular trajectory of the RFC from the start. And that can be read as an excellent reason for abandoning the proposal in the RFC – on procedural grounds alone.
Yes, I reverted Nathan's closure: twice, because he reverted my reversion. There is nothing at WP:RFC to preclude my doing so – as an experienced editor in good standing, deeply concerned about due process and the calm and consensual development of MOS. I gave my reasons, and I have just now given more reasons. I did not revert the action of an unvinvolved admin, note.
My reversion was endorsed by Darkfrog, the most vigorous proponent of the views that I reject in the RFC.
The best solution: leave it. Start again, if anyone wants to. But let any future RFC be conducted fairly, honestly, without the appearance of ownership by any party, and with a question that is transparent in its intent and useful in its scope.
♥
NoeticaTea? 22:44, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
He has reverted again. [44] This is one of a series of reverts and clarifications from Noetica during this RfC, and editing other people's posts, adding his own opinion in bold, attempts to keep a running tally of votes, reverting when it was removed, topped off by twice reverting an uninvolved editor's closure, and now twice reverting my explanation for the closing admin -- which I have had to request only because of his reverting. It has been really unacceptable behaviour. SlimVirgin (talk) 22:49, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
What Nathan "closed" was not an RFC any more. The RFC had been ended by a bot (see WP:RFC).
My use of bold, and other devices, has been in response to your own faulty presentation and later inadequate management of an RFC that you initiated, Slim. That was disruptive, on your part. I am entitled to keep things readable, and to work toward an orderly structure and process where you did not.
You are involved, I am involved. If you act in a partisan way, or against the provisions of WP:RFC or WP:OWNERSHIP, someone ought to counteract that. You are an admin, with very high standing in the community; I am not an admin, and am in an extremely vulnerable position. But I will defend due process here, and I will explain my actions and meet the requirements of policy and guidelines to the best of my ability – in the face of abuses by others. It is a great pity that uninvolved parties do not intervene similarly, so far. It has been left to my own good-faith efforts.
NoeticaTea? 23:23, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

This should be evaluated by someone who is "sufficiently experienced", "impartial", and "familiar with all of the policies and guidelines that relate to the proposal". (see WP:PROPOSAL) This is a policy page, not a wikilove kitten page, and IMHO needs to be closed by an admin, and not someone who is helping out with the backlog but "doesn't care" (see Noetica's talk page). The boxing and summary should be done by the closing admin, not the person bring the RfC.

One of the troubling things about this RfC is that no one really understands what it is supposed to do. That was clear enough from the extensive comments. The first time the wording was introduced, there was no explanation or edit summary, at least not that was brought out in the rather confused discussion above. Likewise when this RfC was introduced, the new language was just inserted without much of a rationale. Maybe that's where any new attempt at a consensus should start. --Neotarf (talk) 00:16, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

  • Well, yes. Except that it is not a policy page but a guideline page. One of the most important we have, in fact.
I say it again: the RFC was delisted by the bot, and according to WP:RFC, that ends it. Just like a similar one at WT:TITLE, which simply fell of the edge due to neglect, intractably bad management – and eventually, despairing lack of interest. But then, we have grown accustomed to RFCs running counter to the provisions at WP:RFC. A shame.
NoeticaTea? 00:31, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
Guideline, yes, sorry, I was going to double check before I posted. At any rate WP:PROPOSAL applies to both policy and guideline. --Neotarf (talk) 01:30, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
  • I really wish people would void themselves of this idea that any tricky closure, or anything in any way related to policy, should be handled by an admin. That is absolutely not the case. Wikipedia content and policy is built by editors. Secondly, are you not embarrassed to pull a quote that far out of context? You're making the case that an admin should close this, so you use this quote, "sufficiently experienced", "impartial", and "familiar with all of the policies and guidelines that relate to the proposal". The sentence that you pulled that from is this: "This does not require the intervention of an administrator, but may be done by any sufficiently experienced independent editor (an impartial editor not involved in the discussion) who is familiar with all of the policies and guidelines that relate to the proposal." 146.90.43.8 (talk) 00:48, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
  • But Nathan was clearly out of his depth, and unfamiliar with the many complex procedural and other niceties in the case; and the RFC had already been delisted by the bot. Nothing tricky about that, right? It's clear from WP:RFC. If the proposer of an RFC is so negligent as to let it slip away into the archives, that should tell us something about its merits.
    NoeticaTea? 01:12, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
  • You didn't like the way Nathan closed it, so you called him incompetent and reverted him. That's no way to carry on. You were far too heavily involved to revert the closure. Do you really think it was helpful, let alone pleasant, to start tossing "incompetent" around? People disagree with RfC closures all the time. It's in the nature of the thing. Rather than reverting, you should have brought it up on talk, or gone to one of those 3rd opinion noticeboards, or just taken your lumps. Regarding the bot's intervention, that seems to be something you've picked up on tonight. You certainly didn't mention it when you reverted. What did the bot say? Is it a competent bot? Whatever it said, I think that to attempt to overturn Nathan's closure on a technicality goes against the spirit of what we're trying to achieve here. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 02:08, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
Actually, Nathan called Noetica incompetent. If Noetica said anything like that to Nathan, then he didn't do it here. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:55, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
More exactly, Noetica didn't say "incompetent", but he did say "anything like that to Nathan": "less than competent summation of the issues" etc. Nathan's response escalated that comment a little further (the edit vs. editor distinction). Art LaPella (talk) 04:20, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
Ah, I see. That certainly amounts to insults on both sides. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:01, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
No, it does not. I commented on Nathan's actions; Nathan issued a judgement concerning me (with which you disagreed, in fact). There was no further escalation from me. I wrote: "Thank you Nathan. And thank you for not caring (see my talkpage). Surely it is appreciated when non-admins step in to clear backlogs of work that admins normally do; but I think you misjudged, this time."
NoeticaTea? 22:10, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
Note that "Thank you for not caring" sounds like obvious sarcasm, but it wasn't. Art LaPella (talk) 01:51, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
Noetica, if I were to say, "your actions are those of a big fat drama queen," wouldn't you think I was calling you a drama queen? If you leave sarcastic comments, you don't get to say that you didn't escalate. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:57, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
"Sounds like obvious sarcasm, but it wasn't." Want to know what I would think? I would think you were for the second time in this sprawling discussion resurrecting old, old material in an especially provocative way. The last person borrowing that particular trope of yours for political effect is now enduring a one-year block, and an indefinite topic ban from all MOS and TITLE matters. Take care. And move on.
NoeticaTea? 05:58, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Do you say the same about Darkfrog's endorsement of my reversion? He would have liked the close, but he agreed that it was flawed and he had no problem with my action. To his credit!
    Your assumption about my motives is against WP:AGF. I was ready to let things take a different course; but if people want to go by the wikilawyering letter of the law, I must resort to the details in WP:RFC and other provisions – where, by the way, there is nothing said against such actions as I have taken. Unlike the actions of some others involved here.
    I do not toss "incompetent" around. It's not something I would bring in lightly. But I now give the facts as I read them. So do you – anonymously, of course. ☺
    NoeticaTea? 02:20, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
Why would I have liked the conversation to have been ended by an outside party? People were still talking and new voices were still welcome. Does the closer get to decide the issue or something? Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:55, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
To be clear, Darkfrog: that outcome would have suited you, I thought. But not the means by which Nathan sought to produce it. As I have said, it is to your credit that you responded as you did in the circumstances. I am glad that there are some of us who want due process and wise judgements, even if we disagree about how those judgements end up. The quality of RFCs is declining. That should be of concern to us all, regardless of our more particular opinions.
NoeticaTea? 09:10, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
  • I shouldn't have put incompetent in quotes, and I'm sorry for that, but it's essentially what you said. I'm not going to get into a discussion about who did what after you reverted. or about your motives. You were a heavily involved editor who reverted an RfC closure because he didn't like the result. That's the crux. You keep going on about "due process" as though you have some great wrong to right, but don't you think every editor on the wrong side of an RfC closure feels that way? Due process, if that means anything at all within the context of WP, would have been to let the decision stand, and to enter into discussion about your reservations. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 11:11, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
I believe reinserting the contested wording to be right and proper, but why would closing the RfC have resulted in said reinsertion? Sure, the preponderance of evidence is in favor, but how often does that matter around here?
People should continue to discuss this matter if they aren't finished and new voices should still be welcome. I don't think you and I have the same ideas about proper procedure and due process, Noetica. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:01, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
Fine! I do not withdraw my compliment to you, Darkfrog: it is to your credit that you endorsed my reversion of a closure, even though the closure favoured your position. Apply what gloss you will. NoeticaTea? 22:40, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
It is my understanding that, besides the bot ending it, the participants can also just agree among themselves. In fact, WP:RFC also says "Deciding how long to leave an RfC open depends on how much interest there is in the issue, and whether editors are continuing to comment." It's probably better to leave it open for too long than to close it too early. Clearly the disputed wording was being interpreted in at least two ways, and further discussion may be able to unravel that. --Neotarf (talk) 01:42, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
Well, they might agree on various things among themselves – with difficulty, of course, if the proposer comes in and closes parts of it that she doesn't like, which happened in the present case at least three times. But this is not a simple question of "deciding how long to leave an RfC open". It was not open, after the bot delisted it. So it could not be "left" open. That's in accord with WP:RFC; and it makes sense. If there's so little happening that it gets archived and delisted, something is not useful or fathomable about the RFC. A new one should then be started, along better and fairer lines.
NoeticaTea? 02:05, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Goodness gracious. There's a lot of people here who keep insisting that admins have special privileges in closing RFCs. Quite simply, and with all due respect, this idea is total and complete bullshit, and I'm not sure where it gets into the mindset here, but it really has never been a standard. Admins do not have any special powers in declaring consensus on any matter; in cases where Admins are granted priority, is always in cases where doing so potentially requires the use of an administrator tool (blocking, deleting, or protecting) and even in those cases, it is sufficient for a non-admin to close the discussion and evaluate it, and get an admin to enact the results. There is absolutely no requirement or mandate for any discussion which doesn't even need an administrator to enact the results of, to involve an administrator at all. Now, admins may, as experienced editors, often close discussions, but a discussion closed by any uninvolved and sufficiently experienced editor is perfectly legitimate, and doesn't need confirmation by an administrator. At all. Stop trying to make Administrators out to be more than they are. There's no policy page, no guideline, and no requirement written ANYWHERE on Wikipedia that non-admins can't close discussions like this one. See Wikipedia:ADMIN#Administrators.27_abilities, and note the lack of "only admins can close RFCs". Stop it already. --Jayron32 04:34, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
  • You misrepresent what is said, Jayron. And I will thank you to restrain your language in your "fucking" edit summaries, all right? (And you're an admin?)
    I agree with you that admins are not absolutely required for closing these things; but we are entitled to expect better judgement in closing contested RFCs, and there is some hope of that from admins, who have higher standing for a good reason. That's the theory, anyway. In practice, the admin who started the RFC on such a shaky footing then left it to tumble into a mess. So there you go.
    Just as there is nothing anywhere requiring admins to do such a closure, there is nothing anywhere to stop me from reverting a premature closure that showed poor judgement. I acted in good faith, and Darkfrog (holding opposing views) endorsed my action. You have a problem with that? Think about it then; and if after that you still have a problem, with me or my actions, take it to my talkpage. But please: keep a civil demeanour chez moi. ♥
    NoeticaTea? 09:10, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
  • I've not mentioned you by name. Feeling guilty? --Jayron32 17:07, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Guilty? Not in the slightest. Make your meanings clearer, and you will get even clearer answers.
    NoeticaTea? 22:40, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
  • That might be your theory, but it's not mine; it's not in the policy, nor is part of the WP ethos. Why do you think the admin icon is a mop and bucket? You're asserting that an admin typically has better judgement than his non-admin homologue. If that were the case, it would be reasonable to go the whole hog and give admins primacy in all content disputes. And wouldn't that be fun! 146.90.43.8 (talk) 11:11, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Well, here is an example of a user requesting an admin closure of an rfc. Two admins responded favourably to the request, both contributed to the closure and nobody seems to have objected. My apologies if that is not as routine as I had assumed. Even if formally admins have no "special privileges" it is common practice to ask them to help when peer interactions are making no progress. A closure by an uninvolved admin once discussion has died down (or is merely going in circles) would be helpful in this case. --Mirokado (talk) 12:33, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
  • That's fair enough, Mirokado. If people want to post there ask an admin to close an RfC, that's up to them. Personally, I don't like that idea at all, but if others do, good luck to them. But this is something completely different. This is overturning an existing closure because it was not made by an admin, and that really is not on. Surely, you can't support that. The argument that admins are in some way more competent to deal with matters of content than non-admins runs counter to everything that WP is about. And if you've ever glanced at RfA, I'm sure you'll have seen that ability to contribute to the content side of WP is not high on the list of prerequisites. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 13:19, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Noetica, by your own argument, summations should not be removed from the talk page; in general, something on-topic should never be removed from the talk page, except for archiving. So you should put back Nathan's summary and SlimVirgin's summary of summary, probably at the tail end of the discussion. You have the right to overturn a closure (admin or non-admin), so you don't need to put back either closure. Beyond that, I don't think it makes any sense to ask for admin help here when there is no editorial consensus. If an admin hands down a specific judgment, it will just be an imposed one. If it sticks in spite of that, we would have set a wrong precedent for WP. The "no-consensus" summary (probably about right) would not work because there is the question of what it means: to keep current wording, wording as it was a month ago, a year ago, four years ago? I see debates on all those issues. I suggest you close the discussion (a purely technical procedure, with no summary or evaluation added) and start a new thread asking explicitly whether the part-in-question should be 1. included or 2. removed. This means we don't need to worry about what was in the article when. I would say every line in an article should have justification for being there, and so the onus of consensus is on those wanting inclusion. That last part, I realize, is the crux of the practical side of the issue.
One point on the theory and practice of admins closing such discussions. The theory is that admins are the same as the rest except for policy decisions on Afds, user blocks and so on. The practice is that their opinions carry a tad bit more weight because they, on average, have more editing experience than others. But here we have plenty of experienced editors already contributing to the debate, and taking an admin's word as the final one is just elevating them to a position WP policy doesn't entitle them to, and, in all fairness, one I haven't seen any admin asking for. Churn and change (talk) 20:09, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
I don't think I agree that anyone has the right to overturn a closure after 33 days. If it's closed prematurely, then yes, but 30 days is the default, and no one had commented for some time. So the closure was valid and the closing editor was uninvolved. Starting yet another RfC with the same question seems like overkill. We already had a discussion before this RfC, where there was consensus to include the words in question; that was on 31 August (see here). Noetica would not accept that consensus, so I started the RfC on 1 September. He did his best throughout it to turn it into a mess, then he overturned the closure on 4 October. To open yet another RfC to please just one person makes no sense. SlimVirgin (talk) 20:35, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
By "right" I meant a procedural right in the sense such a revert would not attract sanctions (short of being 3RR). RFCs, including closing summaries, aren't binding. If a closing summary is unacceptable to an editor (in this case, to two editors) then the dispute is still on.
There is the issue several experienced editors did oppose inclusion, even though they were a minority (as per the list you posted, and which Noetica edited out of present existence). To me, content of an article should be justified by consensus; if there is no consensus it should be there, it shouldn't be there. Churn and change (talk) 21:27, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
Yes, but the rationale for refusing to recognize the closing summary is invalid. Claiming to not recognize the validity of the closure because the person doing the closing wasn't an admin is a non-reason. It would be like claiming that because it wasn't closed on a Wednesday, it can't be valid. If there's a real reason to oppose beyond "It didn't close the way I voted" or "It wasn't closed by an admin", then I don't see what the actual objection is. Can you bring up a problem, beyond either of those two reasons? --Jayron32 21:35, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
I agree the admin/non-admin thing is nonsense. After all, most of the admins voting here actually voted for the proposal to begin with (you, jc37, the proposer, and, I think PBS), so the closure accorded with their views. No point asking me about the objection to the closure; I think the closure should probably be discussed standalone, if there is consensus, not necessarily unanimous, that the summary should be respected, the issue is done. The objection closure was too early seems strange if the thread had gone into the archives because of inactivity. But I can't speak for the two editors who objected to it. Churn and change (talk) 21:55, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Churn, if you look at the sorry history of this RFC, you will find me preserving what others had written: keeping everything open and visible, and explaining my actions to keep the RFC in conformity with settled procedures. You will find SlimVirgin, in her occasional entries here, hiding and reverting such attempts to keep order. You will find her, as the proposer of the RFC, selecting a portion of it and declaring it to be closed discussion, and attempting to draw administrative attention to that selection. If I have once or twice, in reverting grossly anomalous actions here, left some remarks off the page, that was not my intention. It is how reversions work though, isn't it? I have no problem with any such remarks being restored. Please go ahead and do that, if it's important to anyone.
    I think it is clear: the appropriate closure would be, or will be, "no consensus". That should not itself be controversial. We can hope that an admin, or indeed a suitably experienced and impartial editor, can see that pretty clearly. It is in a way inevitable. The sooner we get such a closure, if the RFC is not deemed to have simply lapsed on closure by the bot (according to explicit provisions at WP:RFC), the better. Then we might move on, having learned that such thoroughly flawed RFCs will encounter resistance for their serious procedural shortcomings. The stakes are too high for such RFCs to become the norm at vital policy and guideline talkpages.
    NoeticaTea? 22:40, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
Slim:
  • I am not surprised that you find Nathan's "closure" acceptable. But I contrast your attitude with Darkfrog's, who endorsed my overturning it even though he supports your proposal and therefore might have been pleased with the content of Nathan's judgement. You speak of "rights"? I question your "right" to start an RFC with non-neutral and inaccurate advertisement to the community, against the explicit provisions at WP:RFC. I question your "right" to assert ownership of the RFC, censoring well-explained efforts to document its course when you had simply gone missing. I definitely question your characterisation of my orderly efforts to remedy the disorderly actions of others. Or wanton inactions, which were also a problem. And I question a great deal more; but we have to move on. Let's all learn from this, yes? Another RFC might well be justified: properly and fairly conducted, and with a proposal that truly addresses concerns unearthed in the one we should now be abandoning.
Churn:
  • You speak of "the list [SlimVirgin] posted, and which Noetica edited out of present existence". That is fully explained above. That's how reversions work; but let any remarks be restored. I would welcome that. Don't expect me to do all the work, though! Now, do you speak also of Slim's suppression of my earlier list? Did you track that also, as you selectively track my actions? Your count of who might be displeased by Nathan's "closure" is also rather wayward. If you want to avoid interminable churning of issues here, don't make careless statements that cry out for correction. Move on?
Jayron:
  • There was a complex of reasons for opposing Nathan's "closure". Don't simplify unreasonably, or you will just prolong pointless to-and-fro when we ought to be doing something more productive, now.
NoeticaTea? 23:08, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
But the whole point is you should have reverted what you disagreed with, the closure, and moved the summary comments to the end. You removed those comments, don't you think you should restore them as a courtesy? Is the argument others have done it a justification, even if true? Yes, I did read the running-poll debate, and the final disposition, of collapsed but present, seems good. I am focusing specifically on your actions not because of non-neutrality but because your actions are the latest ones and hence are more visible. Where did I count who might be displeased by Nathan's closure? I said two people have objected to it; is that a wrong statement? Are you reading an implication "just two" there? I maintain, of the three reasons you gave, the non-admin and too-early aren't valid because of policy and because discussion had been inactive long enough for thread to be archived; the third, incorrect summary, would be valid if there are others agreeing with you. If there are, I would say the dispute continues, with present disposition 'no consensus.' To me, 'no consensus' means 'no consensus to include.' That conclusion depends rather strongly on how you justify your overturning of the RFC closure, and how much support you have on that. Churn and change (talk) 23:42, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
It may be your "whole point", Churn. That does not make it the whole point. I have already explained my actions to put things back on track according to the provisions for RFCs at WP:RFC, and said that if they are imperfect, others can do some of the work too. By all means, restore any remarks that were incidentally removed. You still ignore or excuse, interestingly, some of the much larger anomalies to which I have adverted. If my actions are "the latest", ask yourself why I resorted to those actions. Or better, read and fully absorb the reasons I have already given you for those. Where are Slim's reasons for her actions, anyway? Including in the discussions that preceded the RFC. Let's just leave it all behind, as an unredeemable mess. There is clearly no consensus to insert confusing text that was removed, with accompanying discussion, more than a year ago. Address the real underlying issues, fairly and collegially, and we'll all be better off. So will MOS; so will Wikipedia; so will the readers, ultimately. That's what it's about – not maintaining one's cherished text in MOS at all costs.
Can we move on now, really?
NoeticaTea? 00:06, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
Noetica, you are not the angelic defender of order. You are the defender of your own personal preferences and your own ideas about how RfCs should work. There is more than one right way to hear everyone out. Absolutely no one but yourself has said anything about procedural shortcomings. All objections to Slim's proposal except yours have had to do with its substance.
As for "clearly no consensus," chuck the "clearly" and one could argue either way. More than half of the participants supported it and far more than half of the evidence supports it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:45, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Not invariably angelic. Who is? But I am a staunch defender of order, in the best ways that I know.
  • Personal preferences? Hardly. Not unargued ones, at least. There is much in MOS that I think is ridiculous, but I leave it alone. And I defend it against arbitrary removal.
  • My ideas of how RFCs should work are the community's ideas, as captured in WP:RFC. If people here don't like that, let them take it up at WT:RFC. Or the village pump, maybe. Don't blame someone who stands out for insisting on those consensually derived provisions.
  • There is clearly no consensus either way. If we discount merely confused votes that mix up two kinds of provisions in MOS (see my detailed account of this in my summation subsection, above), there is not even a numerical majority in favour of the misunderstood wording. When there is no consensus either way, accept it. And work on the underlying issues, which really need to be articulated in an honest RFC, conducted as the community expects. The sooner the better.
NoeticaTea? 01:50, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
WP:RFC does not contain the large number of formal rules that you are acting as if it contains. If there is something in WP:RFC outlining the specific structure that an RFC must have or stating that the person who initiates the RFC has very specific duties which Slim has failed to perform, then point to the line. If your ideas came from the community, then the community is something other than WP:RFC.
No numerical majority? There's been a numerical majority in every single count. You'd have to do some serious cherry-picking to get an even split. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:18, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
Did you read what I wrote, a few lines above? It was this: "If we discount merely confused votes that mix up two kinds of provisions in MOS (see my detailed account of this in my summation subsection, above), there is not even a numerical majority in favour of the misunderstood wording." Keep misreading and misrepresenting, and we'll be here forever. Can we put it all behind us, and in future work according to WP:RFC? For a start read the bits about neutrality and delisting by the bot; note the omission of any prohibition on reverting incompetent closures; read the whole thing, preferably. And read what the community says at WP:TALK, also. Both Slim and I edited at others' contributions; I have explained my own reversions, and I have twice said that I have not the slightest objection if anyone will undertake the work of restoring anything incidentally removed along the way. Do it yourself, if it bothers you! The intent was plainly not to stifle comment. Then compare Slim's actions; and note for example how signed votes (including actual signatures) on this page are still replicated, misleadingly, through her intervention.
Give it a rest. I will when you will! Move on.
NoeticaTea? 03:46, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
Of course I read what you write. I just don't agree with you. Cutting out the contributions of everyone whose votes displease you, perhaps because you would prefer to believe that they didn't understand the issue, would be cherry-picking. You consistently claim that people who don't agree with you must have misunderstood something.
And of course I have read WP:RFC. It doesn't contain the content that you claim it contains. You've accused Slim of doing wrong by not enforcing a strictly structured RfC, but WP:RFC doesn't say that anyone has to. It doesn't outline a strict RfC structure at all. This idea of a "proper" RfC structure is not coming from WP:RFC. It's coming from you. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:50, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
Laughable and entirely unsupportable misrepresentation of my actions, if doing that were not a serious departure from productive talkpage behaviour. Tell you what: I will resist the inclination to refute it in detail. This has to stop somewhere.
NoeticaTea? 06:07, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
"Entirely unsupportable"? You do know that your posts are recorded, right? Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:39, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

I step away from the keyboard for a moment, and look what happens to this thread! The subthreads have become impossible to follow; I will put my points all together.

  • I don't know if it was me Jayron was cursing out with the F-bomb in the edit summary, or someone else, but at the risk of being hectored about "feelings", I will respond to the issue of who should close that Jayron seems to be upset about. True, there have been non-admins close discussions, but they are the type you will see a few months later with an RfA where everyone votes to support because "I already thought they were an admin". The same with admins who close the discussions. Although admins are expected to know something about different areas of the Wikipedia, the editors who follow these pages are used to seeing certain admins participate in the discussions and have an idea about whether they have clue or are familiar with the issues.
  • Is Darkfrog (sic)? No, the usage sounds perfectly normal to my version of AmE. The way it is phrased I interpret to be a way to soften a criticism. But Noetica should be humored since he uses OzEng, and as I understand it, they do things a little differently; I have even heard that in the antipodal lands, they walk upside down. But Darkfrog has not introduced an error.
  • Did Darkfrog make a summation? No. I'm afraid I was the only one who tried to summarize the rationale for the proposal, and it was the same as the first rationale against the proposal. The so-called summation was a comment added after the ivote, and was more of a rhetorical question. If comment was seriously expected, you would think it would have been presented in the discussion section. I suspect the real problem isn't lack of understanding, but lack of agreement.
  • It's clear there is no consensus, and advertising in additional forums just produced the same result on a larger scale. If the original requester still wants to pursue the idea, perhaps it should be reworked to address the issues that were brought up, and a new discussion should focus on something like "Should the MoS be ignored for all articles?" or "Should projects be able to opt out of MOS?" Or "Should projects be encouraged to set requirements for articles in one category in the areas where variations are permitted?" or whatever.

--Neotarf (talk) 01:40, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Does anyone agree with the reasons given for reverting Nathan's closure?

Noetica's primary reason for reverting was that a "controversial RfC should be closed by an admin". The above discussion shows that he is a minority of one in that opinion. Noetica has argued, at length, that the validity of the votes should be decided according his own criteria. Jason's "failure" to use Noetica's criteria was another reason that Noetica gave for reverting him. It seems to me self-evident that Jason is not obliged to use Noetica's criteria, any more than he's obliged to use mine or any other participant's. Jason's job was to assess the opinions and thought processes of all participants, which he did. Subsequent to his revert, Noetica has mentioned that the bot had delisted the RfC before Jason closed it. Well, the bot did exactly that, it delisted it; it removed it from the list. It didn't declare that all bets were now off, and we must start again. The RfC was open for 33 days. All interested parties must already have seen the listing. The hours between the delisting and the closure made no difference at all.

I don't feel that Noetica, a heavily involved editor, should have reverted Nathan, an uninvolved editor. I don't feel that Noetica has found any support for the reasons he gave for the revert: it should have been an admin, Jason didn't use Noetica's criteria, a bot had delisted the RfC. Noetica's cri de guerre throughout all of this has been "due process". Surely due process now is that Nathan's closure stand, and the text be included in the article. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 12:09, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

It's my understanding that an RfC tag is a request for new voices and new participants. Because the conversation is ongoing (or was before we all got sidetracked into a discussion of whether or not the RfC tag should be removed), I believe that it is still proper to invite new participants.
The rules do not seem to require that the person who closes the RfC be an administrator.
As for deciding the issue, more than half of the participants support re-inserting the contested wording, but that's not how consensus is supposed to work (it's often how it does work, but that's another matter). I'd like to look at the evidence of the practical consequences of this wording. Four different contributors claim to have seen problems that they attribute to the presence or absence of this wording, and I'd love to hear from them again or from anyone who's witnessed something similar. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:46, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
That's reasonable Darkfrog,but I think there's a limit to how many new participants we can attract. I'd also be interested to see concrete examples. How about we a drop a line to those four and see what they come up with; then, after that, if nothing's changed within the RfC, we go with Nathan's closure? Consensus is always the thorniest issue. At some point, someone has to make a decision, even if it's to declare no consensus. In this instance it was Nathan who made the call, and he was fully qualified to do so. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 14:07, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
The point of an RfC is to create a framework within which a decision can be made, however imperfectly. The framework is "30 days discussion as the default maximum (can be closed earlier if there are no objections), with closure by an uninvolved editor." People can revert a closure if it happens before the 30 days is up, or if the closer has previously taken a side and therefore shouldn't be the closer, or if there has been inappropriate canvassing or inadequate publicizing, but otherwise closures are respected. There would be no point in holding RfCs otherwise.
This RfC was held according to the normal standards for a guideline RfC. It was publicized on the usual bot pages and on the PUMP, GA and FA pages. It was left open for 33 days. Someone requested closure on AN/RFC, and an uninvolved editor weighed up the consensus, which reflected the consensus of the previous discussion. It also reflected reality (namely that cross-article consistency is not, as a matter of fact, required). There is therefore no reason not to respect Nathan's closure. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:57, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
I couldn't agree more. The problem is that Nathan's closure was not respected, so we have to decide where to go from here. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 22:32, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
There's nothing to stop us from re-respecting it. The only alternative is another RfC. Given that I started this one by apologizing for being repetitive (an informal discussion had already established a consensus on August 31, but Noetica objected), it would be absurd to start a third one just because Noetica has objected again. SlimVirgin (talk) 22:55, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
Again from WP:PROPOSAL: "If consensus for broad community support has not developed after a reasonable time period, the proposal is considered failed. If consensus is neutral or unclear on the issue and unlikely to improve, the proposal has likewise failed." Also: "It is typically more productive to rewrite a failed proposal from scratch to address problems than to re-nominate a proposal."
--Neotarf (talk) 23:36, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
That's about proposing new guidelines or policies. It has nothing to do with RfCs. SlimVirgin (talk) 00:30, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
I don't see why not. How big does it have to be to qualify? One paragraph? Ten pages? It's new, it's a proposal, and it's a guideline. Policies and guidelines have a unique position. --Neotarf (talk) 18:11, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

This closure was premature.

The original discussion died down about halfway through, and the initiator of the proposal made a request for early closure. But there was some disagreement about the early closure. This request was postponed, and in the meantime, notices were placed on various pages. This drew in a few more votes and comments, about equally divided, as before. Again the discussion died down. At this point, I wrote a summary of the positions and started a new section for tallies, since the the discussion seemed to be finished and the tallies had not been updated. This triggered a new round of discussion. At the time of the latest attempt at closure, several questions had been asked, and the problem reframed in several ways, but responses were still being awaited.

I don't think it's too fair to dump on the editor who attempted the closure, since it was done in good faith, although evidently without being familiar with WP:CONLIMITED, which states "Wikipedia has a higher standard of participation and consensus for changes to policies and guidelines than to other types of articles" or with WP:PROPOSALs for policies and guidelines, that asks that a closing editor be "familiar with all of the policies and guidelines that relate to the proposal", consider whether "major concerns raised during the community discussion been addressed", and whether "the proposal contradict(s) any existing guidelines or policies". The editor's statement "The closure was neither premature nor incompetent, but you've cleverly exploited my not caring. You may continue arguing about something that no readers actually care about."[45] should pretty much answer any questions about that individual's level of attention to nuances of policy and guideline. It is admirable that they responded to a request to help out with the backlog, especially on these pages that seem to have so many hidden landmines for the unsuspecting newcomer, but they didn't seem to have noticed that the discussion had indeed started up again. --Neotarf (talk) 23:26, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

The RfC was over. The bot had archived it because no one had commented for seven days. You unarchived it but prematurely removed the bot tag (on 28 September). [46] Then a few of you started discussing whether the words to be restored had ever been in the MoS (yes, they had). But there was no new discussion, no new issues. That discussion petered out too. Nathan then came along on October 4 (33 days after the RfC had opened) formally closed it, and summed up consensus. Then suddenly Noetica claimed (a) that an admin had to close it, which is not correct; and (b) that the closure was premature, which is clearly also not correct. SlimVirgin (talk) 00:41, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
No I did not "prematurely remove the bot tag", the bot removed the bot tag with the edit summary "Removing expired RFC template." [47] I had to revert the removal later in order to take the discussion out of the archive, but I restored it as the last step. --Neotarf (talk) 01:58, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
I don't agree that the closure was premature, Neotarf. There was no on-going substantive discussion at the time of the closure, and there hasn't been any since. It's true that Nathan's response to Noetica's insulting remarks was somewhat petulant, but that has no bearing on the closure itself. Anything said after the revert clearly could have not been used as justification for the revert. I can't accept that this RfC has to be closed by someone familiar with the minutia of the MoS. The question in the RfC is not one that requires any particular specialist knowledge. It deals with a concept that pretty much every editor is familiar with. And let's not forget that it's the job of the closing editor to assess the consensus among the arguments put forward within the RfC itself, nothing more. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 11:54, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
I believe that rearranging the issue so that we could view it from the POV of evidence rather than by the number of people who agreed with one side or the other (not that that can't work too) counts as new material for the purposes of this thread.
I do believe that the closure was premature but I do not believe that an admin has to do the closing. My only objection to Nathan specifically was that he resorted to name-calling. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:56, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
What is your suggestion now, Darkfrog? I noticed on August 11 that these words had been removed and I restored them. I was reverted. I began this discussion on August 12. The bot archived it and Noetica objected to me unarchiving it, so I had to restart it on August 22. We achieved a majority to restore the words on August 31. Noetica reverted. I therefore started the RfC on 1 September. On October 4 Noetica twice reverted Nathan's closure.
As a result it has now been two months to discuss a sentence that we all know is demonstrably true -- Wikipedia does not as a matter of fact require style consistency across articles. If you're not going to support Nathan's closure, what do you suggest? SlimVirgin (talk) 01:31, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
Of course it does, and there are probably some bots operating on that premise. You should probably go back and read the comments everyone gave with their ivote. You may think you know what you wrote, but does everyone interpret it the way you do? Proofreading is more than looking for typos. --Neotarf (talk) 02:09, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
Darkfrog, you've mentioned a couple of times that one side of the debate has a numerical majority and that the same side has put forward by far the strongest arguments. That, essentially, is consensus. If we don't act now and implement the proposal, then we are left with the version supported by a numerical minority and by far the weakest arguments. You've also mentioned that some editors were going to provide examples which will shed new light on the issue. I feel that if they were going to do that, they would have done so by now. We can't wait for ever. If such examples do exist they will surface at some point, and we'll all face-palm and make the appropriate adjustment to the article. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 11:54, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
Minor distinction: I said "evidence," not "arguments." Evidence includes things that people have observed. Arguments are demonstrations of logic that can include hypothetical situations. There have been several decent arguments on both sides.
"Act"? What action do you suggest? Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:20, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
If evidence is presented which will settle the discussion, that will be great. I rather feel that if it existed, it would have been presented by now. By "act", I mean put the amended version of the text into the article. The article can have only one version of the text. There is a version which is supported by the numerical majority and the strongest arguments. There was consensus in favour of putting that version into the article in the RfC. As things stand, it is not in the article. I feel that it should be. Once the RfC decided that amended version should be in the article, the change should have been made immediately. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 19:01, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
Actually, it is the arguments FOR the proposal that have not been summarized. What is broke? What is it trying to fix? I don't care if someone presents either "evidence" or "arguments" for the insertion of the language; I would love to see either. I haven't seen anything beyond some wild yearning for expression that MOS is supposedly inhibiting. Is this proposed language meant to weaken MOS so people can insert dashes and hyphens and capitalization all over the place whenever they have a creative urge to do so? Because those are the people who are all over this thread and the proposal is worded in a way that is very hard to interpret. Can someone cut through the woo factor and provide some clarity to this issue? --Neotarf (talk) 19:20, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
  • I see multiple editors objecting to the closure on grounds discussion wasn't over. Almost by definition, that means there is no consensus to accept the closure. Debating whether they are right becomes a debate over a debate over a debate.
Another point. On WP, if an edit sticks, it is assumed to represent consensus. Per WP:CONSENSUS: " Any edit that is not disputed or reverted by another editor can be assumed to have consensus." That means SlimVirgin's addition of the wording four years ago was per consensus. It also means the removal a year ago also reflected a consensus, a new one changed from the old one. From the very next sentence on WP:CONSENSUS: "Should that edit later be revised by another editor without dispute, it can be assumed that a new consensus has been reached." The latest addition by SlimVirgin was disputed, so the existing consensus before the RFC was not to have the material there. The RFC, in my opinion, has ended in no consensus, since the "include" group doesn't have an overwhelming majority of votes, and the subjective weight of arguments is strong on both sides. That means the existing consensus from before the RFC, not to include, stands. Churn and change (talk) 01:37, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
This is why we have RfCs with a default 30-day closure, rules about publicizing, rules against canvassing, and uninvolved editors to close them. So that someone makes a decision regarding current consensus (not four years ago, or one year ago), based on arguments and based on numbers, and then we move on. The problem with this page is that the normal decision-making processes seem not to apply. I'm not talking only about this RfC but apparently right across the board. It's in everyone's interests to get that sorted out, whether you agree or disagree about any particular issue. SlimVirgin (talk) 01:48, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
I rather agree with Churn and change, and I think I would even if I wanted the addition. If there are any further attempts to add this text before a proper closure in favour of doing so, I think we should escalate this somehow. I will be commenting further, I hope later this evening European time, but real life calls for a while... --Mirokado (talk) 13:28, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Since we have been asked for our detailed opinions about the undone closure:

  • Nathan posted the closure at 2012-10-04T15:52:43. This was about two and a half days after Darkfrog posted the Presentation of evidence... section (diff) at 2012-10-02T04:47:15, with until then, no responses to that section (I responded a bit later). There was an ongoing thread about the bot archive and probably others in progress too (it is getting difficult to keep track...). The bot's archival was reversed indicating that at least some participants did not feel that the discussion was ready to be stopped. For these reasons I think the action was premature.
  • Here is Nathan's rationale:

    This RfC was about the sentence "An overriding principle is that style and formatting choices should be consistent within an article, though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole." In particular, whether the phrase "though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole" should be included or not. There were two reasons to remove the phrase: that it is superfluous and that Wikipedia should be striving to be consistent across all articles. These are two very different viewpoints that are arguing for the same change in the guidelines, but the net effect of the change would be that it would increase arguing over what was meant in the MOS. Those who wish to retain the phrase (or oppose removal) basically are arguing that consistency across Wikipedia articles is not, nor has ever been, required, and even if it is superfluous it should be reiterated in this sentence. The consensus of the discussion was to oppose the removal of the phrase. -Nathan Johnson (diff)

  • The final sentence is both clearly inaccurate as just a bald statement since there was (and is) obviously no consensus and an unsupported statement of opinion, with no attempt to explain how this conclusion was arrived at, despite quite a long preamble. We need at the appropriate time at least a summary of which arguments are most persuasive and why, mention of discounted arguments and why, which policy(ies) were regarded as most relevant and so on. And not too long! Not easy.

Thus in addition to it's being premature, I think the closure was flawed. --Mirokado (talk) 00:32, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

  • Surely you can see the flaw in that argument. People start an RfC when they cannot reach agreement among themselves. The idea is to get as many people as possible to participate, and everyone agrees to abide by the final decision of an uninvolved editor. Anyone who participates in an RfC implicitly signs up to that contract. Here, you're reneging on your agreement. You don't like the decision so you're simply refusing to accept it.
You're also confusing two kinds of consensus. There is the consensus that counts, the one assessed by Nathan, which took into account all of the views expressed in the RfC, and there is the consensus between 3 or 4 of you who are not happy with the result. You 3 or 4 have decided that there is not a consensus between you to ratify the RfC--big surprise!--so you're not going to let it stand. As I wrote below, if you're allowed to get away with this, then you've just invented a way for any small group of editors unhappy with the result of an RfC to sabotage it. Well done!
You have absolutely no grounds for preventing the new version being added into the article. You said that the closure was premature, so I asked you to provide evidence of on-going discussion. You came up an exchange from last week about bot-settings. I mean, come on! You're also unhappy with the brevity of Nathan's closing remarks, and your cohorts would prefer an admin. Well I see we've had an admin closure, which stretched in its magnificence to two sentences. I genuinely hope you'll support my revert of that closure. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 11:26, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm going to add the text back into the article, per the RfC

I'm going to add the text back into the article. From the section above, the only remaining justification for the revert appears to be that the closure was premature. I'd say that is demonstrably not the case. The only discussions we've had in the last few days have been meta discussions about the closure, about the nature of consensus, and so on. At the time Nathan closed the RfC there had been no substantive discussion of the question in the RfC for several days and there has been none since. The RfC ran its course, and consensus was assessed by an uninvolved editor. To anyone considering reverting my change, I would ask that you point out here where the on-going discussion is. For the record, I commented within the RfC as 87.112.91.134. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 11:54, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Obviously jumping the gun. I will revert. --Mirokado (talk) 13:16, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
"Obviously jumping the gun" is no argument at all. I've put it back in. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 14:28, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
IP 146, what do you regard as a "substantive" discussion of the question? Why do you say that it's not "substantive"? --Neotarf (talk) 16:22, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
I mean discussion relating directly to the question put in the RfC, discussion that could conceivably change someone's mind about including the text in the article. Without that the argument that the RfC was closed prematurely doesn't hold water. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 17:40, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
Neotarf, I see that you've reverted claiming that there is no consensus. That's ludicrous. Nathan made the decision on consensus when he closed the RfC. You're involved in the RfC; it's not up to you decide whether or not there is consensus. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 17:52, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
That is obviously under dispute. Why don't you let the dispute play out, and let everyone have their say? Sheesh. When someone wanted to update a tally, there was a major freakout because discussion was still going on. Why be in such a hurry to stifle discussion now? There isn't a deadline you know. --Neotarf (talk) 18:43, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
The RfC decided the question. The amended version should be in the article. Two or three of you who are not happy with the result are refusing to allow that happen, thereby claiming there is a dispute. If editors in every RfC carried on like that, it would wreck the entire process. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 19:01, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Filibustering

Can I point people to our policy on consensus which states Editors who refuse to allow any consensus except the one they insist on, and who filibuster indefinitely to attain that goal, risk damaging the consensus process. Can i remind everyone that Wikipedia is built by consensus and sometimes that means people moving away from their positions and coming to an accord. In the interests of this case, perhaps it might be best to examine the nub of the issue. The point is whether Wikipedia applies consistency across the entire encyclopedia as well as internally in an article. This is demonstrably not the case, the MOS makes the point itself by noting that when in dispute use the style of the first major contributor. This is why some articles use colour and some use color. If the MOS allows for such differences in style, shouldn't it therefore say so? Why would it not do so? If the fear is in the words themselves, can we not create a new set of words that please us all? Building a consensus does not allow anyone a finger on the nuclear button to disrupt any discussion by offering unilateral positions. Editors need to collaborate to find a common ground and remove the personalization of the issue away from she said he said and into an area of commonality. I would hate to see people become too frustrated over this issue. It's just an encyclopedia built by a group of people that will be changed when we're all long dead and buried if we've done our parts right. Hiding T 22:45, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

  • Actually, the point of this conversation was whether or not to reinsert the words "though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole." The idea that the MoS requires internal consistency but does not require inter-article consistency has been around for years. The original issue here was what the MoS should say about that. Then that dredged up other ideas about what the purpose of the MoS should be.
And Hiding makes a point. Maybe "not ...whole" isn't something that can get consensus either way, but is there some other text that could? Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:54, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Indeed. And the filibustering seems to be paying off. Three or four editors have used brute force to prevent the result of an RfC standing, and now a tame admin has come along and re-closed it in their favour. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 11:34, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Postmature closure?

I thought this thing was long dead and gone. Slim Virgin failed to convince people that we should add the odd clause that she inserted here on Aug. 11 claiming it was being "restored". As far as I can tell, the whole basis for this mess was this lie. We didn't buy it. Move on. Or if I missed something, what? Dicklyon (talk) 02:50, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

There have been heated disagreements, Dicklyon, but no one has told lies. The contested wording was in the MoS for quite some time, so it is accurate to say that this was about restoring or reinserting it. Hit CTRL-F for the word "legwork" if you want proof. Quiddity dug up some relevant changes. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:57, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
Ah, yes, I just studied the history some more. I see now that it was out for over a year, and that for quite a while earlier, until May 2010, it included a bit that clarified the intent, saying "Therefore, even where the Manual of Style permits alternative usages, be consistent within an article." That is, it was more about encouraging consistency. Without this last sentence, it seems to be more about permission to be inconsistent, i.e. to ignore the recommendations of the MOS as long as an article is internally consistent. That's the nuance that many of us object to. If it were restored in whole, it might be less of a problem. Dicklyon (talk) 03:12, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
There's some extrapolation here, but I was under the impression that no one objected to reinserting that part of the sentence and that the whole conversation was about "not necessarily ...whole." Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:32, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Note: I've restored Nathan Johnson's close. There is no reason why an RfC cannot be closed by an editor in good standing and this editor does appear to be in good standing. The request for closure was sitting on AN for quite a while, the RfC itself saw no new opinions coming in for several days, closing it was a reasonable action. --regentspark (comment) 21:08, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

And I have re-restored it. Noetica complained that it wasn't an admin closure, and now we have an admin endorsing that it was a valid closure. Noetica should stop stonewalling the consensus in this page with non-existing requirements that are in conflict with Wikipedia not being a bureaucracy. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:26, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Time to respect the admin's decision

RegentsPark stated "I've restored Nathan's closure." 1. The RfC hatting summary text should reflect Nathan's decision, not Kwami's. 2. That decision should be implemented in the MoS itself—the contested wording should be reinserted. Yes, I opposed Nathan's closure at the time. That is because the discussion itself was still ongoing at the time. Certain parties asked for an admin to weigh in, and an admin did. Now it's time to let it stand. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:54, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

I think I understand one source of confusion: by hatting I meant "hiding" text. My two "hatting" changes are the green bars you see with "Extended content" in them. Those are still there, as you can see. I never reverted anything else, did not change the summary at the top (I think what you are calling Rfc hatting text), which closure the thread reflected and so on. Hope that clears your confusion as to what I was doing at any rate. You can directly check the diffs to confirm I never reverted a thing. Churn and change (talk) 04:03, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
Oh I see. Yes that does show up before the change that you made. I rescind my "Churn probably just made a mistake." But I stand by my actual change. This section should reflect the text of the editor that RegentsPark approved. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:18, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
And the confusions and chaos roll on and on. No, it is not time to accept any patchwork quasi-solution to a monumentally botched process. We really need to do better, to see that RFCs are conducted fairly from start to finish. The suggestion that the present RFC resulted in consensus is surreal. Only the most committed partisan could claim that it had and keep a straight face.
I knew it. I knew before the RFC started there would be difficulties. I know the players too well.
Set it aside, leave it behind, learn the lessons. If that is not done, an ArbCom case may be the only proper continuation.
NoeticaTea? 08:11, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
Seventeen to thirteen in favor of reinserting the text. Far more evidence offered in favor of reinserting the text than against. No the conclusion that this discussion resulted in consensus is not "surreal."
Noetica, you insisted that an admin weigh in. An admin said "Nathan's original decision is valid." Now it is time for you to set it aside, leave it behind, and learn the lessons. As you keep pointing out, I didn't think that Nathan's closure came at a good time either, and I'm willing to let it stand. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:48, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

American/British English changing

Tuesdaily (talk · contribs)

Are the changes this editor is making permissible? Since 2008, has made no other contributions to Wikipedia other than to change American English to British English and is starting to look like a WP:SPA with his editing. While some of it is appropriate, not all the articles he is changing have strong national ties to England. I came across it at the Steven Lewington article, which is essentially a professional wrestler of English descent who wrestles in America and who was most notable in America. In addition to that, I was the original author and I used American English. My concern is that he has made thousands of these changes and that is his entire editing history. A cursory glance is some of the topics, for example, may be like the Steven Lewington article, like his changing the date usage on album articles of a British artist when American English was used before. Regards, — Moe ε 08:23, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

In general, it is not okay to go into articles and change one optional style to another. However, if this editor is going onto the article talk pages, saying "I think this article should be in British English because its topic is related to Britain in ways X, Y, and Z," and receiving no objection within a reasonable period of time, then this would be a grayer area.
Contact the user and direct him or her to WP:RETAIN, specifically the line, "When an English variety's consistent usage has been established in an article, it is maintained in the absence of consensus to the contrary. With few exceptions (e.g. when a topic has strong national ties or a term/spelling carries less ambiguity), there is no valid reason for such a change." Maybe this person just doesn't know about this rule. We have so many. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:57, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
Upon further examination of the articles, if they're about British citizens, then there is a real case for using British English. In this case, I can see why the user is making these changes. I'd say that Teusdaily only needs to raise these changes on the article talk pages if someone objects to them—which you have. Drop Tues a talk page line and say that you've started a talk page discussion about his or her changes. State your reasons why you think the articles should be in U.S. English, allow others to contribute, and a consensus one way or the other will probably form.
Is this user also changing national varieties on subject-neutral articles? Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:46, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
I think your message to him was sufficient, along with all other warnings he has received. Like I said, a lot of the changes are good since British English would be better for citizens, but in the case of an article like Steven Lewington, he changed it based on them being from Britain. Lewington made his notability and resides in the United States, making American English more proper here. That was my concern, since this is something that is either American-preferred or simply neutral differing back to the original style (American, in this case). This was also a concern because he has made so many of these edits. If you feel a majority of his past edits are alright, then it's fine, but I will be looking at future changes he makes to ensure he isn't doing this to neutral/American-English preferred articles again. Regards, — Moe ε 03:29, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
I consider the person being from Britain to be a legitimate reason to prefer British English, even if the person was famous for actions performed elsewhere, though you could certainly make the case otherwise. I wouldn't write an article about J.R.R. Tolkien in South African English, but there are few cases as extreme as his. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:42, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
Certainly "international format" in the edit summaries is misleading; ISO 8601 is the international format.--Curtis Clark (talk) 03:50, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
Yes, Curtis, his edit summaries are also misleading as it implies that British is international language.
Darkfrog: I guess it would vary on our definition of what a strong national ties are. Interestingly, J. R. R. Tolkien used British English, so it would make since that his article and works use British English, not American or South African English. Personally, I wouldn't consider your ancestors or your place of birth to be a strong national tie. If you leave the country and there is seemingly nothing that ties you back to their country of origin other than "X was born in _____", then how are they tied to that country? Certainly topics like Elizabeth II, Great Fire of London and articles on the election of the British Prime Minister establish a strong national tie to use British English. Articles when they are mixed where notability/residence differs from birthplace and it's disputed, is where WP:RETAIN should seemingly come into play. Regards, — Moe ε 06:27, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
  • I have audited the contributions of Tuesdaily (of 500 articles) going back to May 2012 on a 1:4 sample basis. In my opinion, aside from two articles where it may be argued that WP:TIES may not have been correctly interpreted, the articles were correctly put into DMY date formats. Of those two, A Bridge Too Far was an Anglo-British film but for one date was already predominantly in dmy format; "Alone Again Or" may have been converted mistakenly on the basis of the song version by The Damned, but the prior version was also predominantly in dmy format. To me, I cannot see how the editor could be classified as a WP:SPA – (s)he is a [{WP:GNOME|gnome]] for they edit a wide variety of articles across Wikispace for compliance with WP:MOSNUM. It is also clear that the editor has been doing the work manually and rather fastidiously. Specifically regarding 'Steven Lewington', I would contend that many British have made their careers on the other side of the pond, and that it is not totally reasonable to assume that WP:TIES would no longer apply to someone on that basis. It would be more reasonable to go along with how the subject identifies himself, which in this case (according to the article) seems to be unambiguously as a Brit. Therefore I see nothing wrong with the actions of said editor. -- Ohconfucius ping / poke 07:15, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
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